In a Washington Post opinion piece published October 4, Professor John Yoo says that by nominating White House counsel Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Bush “swung and missed” at an historic opportunity to change the court’s direction. Yoo says the unknowns concerning Miers’s views on constitutional law will remain unsettling to conservative Republicans, who see the nomination as a chance to install a court majority opposed to “judicial freelancing” on issues like individual privacy or due process. “Miers may prove to agree with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,” Yoo writes, “but conservatives have no reason to think so.” Nonetheless, “Miers is almost certain to be confirmed,” he concludes.
Later October 4, Professor Yoo discussed the Miers nomination on the PBS NewsHour in a three-way panel with Professors Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine University and Pam Karlan of Stanford.