The brilliant legal scholar Ruth Wedgwood provides a low-key defense of Harriet Miers in today’s WSJ. No, I can’t say I’ve been persuaded (not after reading Will, Krauthammer, Brooks, Lowry, Frum et al.) but she makes some intriguing points – and anything Ruth writes is worth reading, IMHO.

Her basic argument: “I’m a ‘portfolio’ player on the Supremes and think it would be a good idea to have a real-life practicing lawyer on the court — someone who’s actually had to plan a transaction and explain it to a client. The justices often get themselves wound around the axle with intricate tests that don’t work on the ground, failing to see that intelligibility is one of the virtues of good jurisprudence.”

She also says Miers “has to be one tough broad to have made it up through a Texas law firm and the organized bar in that time and place … My only objection is that she uses the word ‘cool.’ But I doubt she would think that European constitutional law was any ‘cooler’ than ours — they don’t do that in Texas. Rather, she and John Roberts would move the center of the court in tandem.”

Judge (no pun intended) for yourself. The rest of the piece is <a href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112933645158169492.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep”?

here.