1) I found Beldar’s defense of her on Texas attorneys’ fees more persuasive than Bruce Fein’s criticism of her. (For one thing, I’m not sure it makes sense to regard officers of the court, selling a kind of influence over the coercive power of the state, as part of a “free market.”)

2) Miers’s 1989 statement that she supported a Human Life Amendment makes me more favorable to her nomination. Yes, I know that the administration has now boxed itself into the position where it spends half its time telling pro-lifers she’s a pro-lifer and the other half of its time telling pro-choicers that it doesn’t matter. But it’s not quite right, I think, to say that we know no more about her views on abortion than we knew about Anthony Kennedy. I don’t believe Kennedy had ever gone on record not just opposing abortion, but regarding it as something that should be illegal. That doesn’t guarantee she will vote to overturn Roe–what would?–but it surely raises the odds. (Unless she now feels compelled to run quickly in the other direction during the hearings.)

How much weight to give her 1989 answer is one question; another is how much weight to give to Roe at all. A number of Miers critics have said that there is more to constitutional law than Roe. That is obviously true, but to leave it at that is, I think, to underestimate Roe’s importance. Overturning Roe really would be a huge blow against the imperial conception of the Supreme Court–both within the Court itself and in the political culture. Which is one reason the Court has resisted doing it.