that Gerry Bradley and I have been advancing, in the WSJ op-ed today (which has been flagged by Jon Adler here and Ramesh Ponnuru over in The Corner:

To be qualified, a Supreme Court justice must have more than credentials; she must have a well-considered “judicial philosophy,” by which is meant an internalized view of the Constitution and the role of a justice that will guide her through the constitutional minefield that the Supreme Court must navigate. Nothing in Harriet Miers’s professional background called upon her to develop considered views on the extent of congressional powers, the separation of powers, the role of judicial precedent, the importance of states in the federal system, or the need for judges to protect both the enumerated and unenumerated rights retained by the people. It is not enough simply to have private opinions on these complex matters; a prospective justice needs to have wrestled with them in all their complexity before attaining the sort of judgment that decision-making at the Supreme Court level requires, especially in the face of executive or congressional disagreement.
Even a star quarterback with years of high school and college football under his belt takes years of experience and hard knocks to develop the knowledge and instincts needed to survive in the NFL. The Supreme Court is the big league of the legal profession, and Ms. Miers has never even played the judicial equivalent of high school ball, much less won a Heisman Trophy.

I also think it’s very interesting (and shrewd) that Randy, in discussing cronyism, relies on the same Alexander Hamilton writings that we earlier relied on in opposing the filibusters. It might have behooved Doug Kmiec (see here) to read Randy’s discussion of Hamilton before citing him in support of the Miers nomination.