From my friend, George Savage, an answer to Brother Hugh:

For the sake of argument, let’s stipulate that Harriet Miers will turn out to be more Antonin Scalia than David Souter. I have a problem with the nomination anyway. I think the Miers pick takes us one step further in rewarding “stealth” legal conservatism rather than the active variety.
Consider the difference between how Democrats and Republicans treat their legal activists: If you spend your legal life explicitly advocating left-wing causes like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you go to the head of the class. On the other hand, if you are an ambitious conservative legal theorist, well, you simply can’t be an ambitious conservative legal theorist. I doubt that this sort of appointment process will lead to a bumper crop of Scalias and Thomases out there in the judiciary at-large anytime soon.