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Harriet Miers (born August 10, 1945Harriet Miers is an American lawyer, currently serving as White House Counsel.

Based on the recommendation of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat - Nevada) ([[1]],[[2]],[[3]]), President George W. Bush nominated her on October 3, 2005 for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. As the Senate hearing process proceeded, Miers' appointment was widely criticized, with Miers herself being characterized as unqualified and a Presidential crony. On October 27 Miers asked the President to withdraw her nomination, and President Bush did so.

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Miers was born in Dallas, Texas, and spent most of her life there until 2001, when she moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the Bush administration. She describes herself as a "Texan through and through." (see[[4]]) The fourth of five children, she is the daughter of real estate investor Harris W. Miers, Sr., and his wife, the former Sally Richardson. It was inititally reported that she was raised a Roman Catholic before becoming an evangelical Protestant, but these were ultimately debunked.

Miers entered Southern Methodist University intending to become a teacher. The economic plight of her family was so dire that she almost dropped out in her freshman year, but she was able to find part-time work that put her through college. Then her father had a debilitating stroke. When a lawyer was able to organize her family's financial situation, Miers was inspired to enter law school (see [[5]]). Miers graduated from Southern Methodist University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics (1967) and from its law school with a Juris Doctor degree (1970). Miers also recently received an honorary degree from Pepperdine University (see[[6]]).

In the late 1990s, while Miers was on the advisory board for Southern Methodist University's law school, she helped create and fund a Women's Studies lecture series named after pioneering Texas lawyer, Louise B. Raggio, who was a mentor to Miers (see [[7]]).

In the summer of 1969, between her second and third years of law school, Miers worked as a clerk for Belli, Ashe, Ellison, Choulos Lieff, the San Francisco law firm founded by "King of Torts", the late eccentric attorney, Melvin Belli (see[[8]]).

After graduating from law school, from 1970 to 1972, Miers was a law clerk for the Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Joe E. Estes.

From 1972 until 2001, Miers worked for the Dallas law firm of Locke, Liddell Sapp (and predecessor firms prior to mergers). She was the first female lawyer hired by the firm, and later became its president. When the merger that created Locke, Liddell Sapp took place in 1999, she became the co-managing partner of a legal business with more than 400 lawyers. In 2000 the firm settled a lawsuit asserting that "it aided a client in defrauding investors" for $22 million (see [[9]]).

As a commercial litigator, she represented clients including Microsoft and the Walt Disney Company.

In 1986, Miers became the first female president of the Dallas Bar Association. In 1992, Miers became the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas. She has also served as chair of the Board of Editors for the .

While head of the State Bar of Texas, Miers joined an unsuccessful effort to have the American Bar Association maintain its then-official position of neutrality on abortion. The ABA adopted neutrality on abortion in 1990 in Chicago at its annual meeting. By the summer of 1992, at its annual meeting in San Francisco, the issue was again pending before the ABA assembly. Meirs, who had not been involved in Chicago, supported ABA abortion neutrality in San Francisco on two grounds. First, the State Bar of Texas is statutorily prohibited from taking positions on political issues. Second, as a unitary bar state, Texas makes bar membership a licensure requirement. Thus, all Texas lawyers who oppose abortion would have been forced, despite those beliefs, to financially support ABA's pro-choice position.

In 1989, Miers was elected to a two-year term as an at-large member of the Dallas City Council. She did not run for reelection in 1991 after a restructure of the city council converted Miers's at-large seat, elected by voters citywide, into a single-district seat.

Miers met George W. Bush in January 1989 at an Austin dinner, an annual affair held for legislators and other important people. Nathan Hecht, her escort close friend, made the introduction. Miers subsequently worked as general counsel for Bush's transition team in 1994, when he was first elected Governor of Texas. She subsequently became Bush's personal lawyer, and worked as a lawyer in his 2000 presidential campaign.

Since September 1994, Miers has contributed to the campaigns of various Republicans (at about the same time she began to work for George W. Bush), including Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Phil Gramm, and Pete Sessions, with recorded contributions to Republican candidates and causes totaling nearly $12,000. Her earlier political history shows support for the Democrats during the 1980s, with recorded contributions to Democratic candidates and causes, including the Democratic National Committee, the Senate campaign of Lloyd Bentsen and the 1988 presidential campaign of Al Gore, totaling $3,000. Her last recorded contribution to a Democratic cause or campaign was in 1988. Ed Gillespie said that she was a "conservative Democrat" at the time.

Miers's mother and two of her brothers still live in Dallas; a third brother lives in Houston, Texas. She also had a sister, Kitty, who is deceased. Miers never married and has no children. Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht has been described as Miers's "companion" and "on-again, off-again boyfriend"; he has known her for over 25 years. After her nomination to the Supreme Court, Hecht was cited as an unofficial spokesperson representing her views.

She is a close friend of Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and former Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman.

Prior to assuming the position of White House Counsel, Miers had served as White House staff secretary, and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. Before joining the Bush administration, Miers was a lawyer in private practice for 27 years, handling business cases, and acting as then-Governor Bush's personal lawyer. She served as the first female president of both the Dallas Bar Association and later the State Bar of Texas, and also served one term on the Dallas City Council.

In 1995, George W. Bush, then Texas governor, appointed Miers to chair the Texas Lottery Commission. Some have credited Miers with reforming the commission after a previous corruption scandal (see [[10]]).

Her tenure has also been criticized, however. In 1997, the commission under Miers hired Lawrence Littwin as executive director, but then fired him five months later. At the time, the contract to operate the lottery was held by the politically connected GTech Corporation (see [[11]]), which had obtained the contract with the help of a former Lieutenant Governor of Texas (Democrat Ben Barnes) (see [[12]]). Littwin, as director, began an investigation into whether GTech had made illegal campaign contributions and whether GTech owed the commission millions of dollars for breaches of its contract. He stated that Miers ordered him to stop the investigation. He brought a lawsuit alleging that he was fired in retaliation for the investigation and to ensure that GTech would keep its contract (see [[13]]). According to Texans for Public Justice, GTech paid Littwin $300,000 to settle the suit (see [[14]]).

Miers resigned from the lottery commission in early 2000, a year before her term ended. She said her resignation had nothing to do with lagging sales in the system's biggest game, Lotto Texas, but rather that she wanted to allow her successor time to prepare for rebidding the lottery's primary operator contract.

In January 2001, Miers followed Bush to Washington, D.C., serving as Assistant to the President and Staff Secretary during the first two years of his presidency. In that role, she opposed the administration's 2001 decision to stop cooperating with the ABA rating of judicial nominees. In 2003, she was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy. In November 2004, Bush named her to succeed Alberto Gonzales, his nominee for Attorney General, to the post of White House Counsel, the chief legal adviser for the Office of the President.

Miers is said to be one of Bush's closest personal friends, and appears given to effusive praise for the President. According to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, Miers has called Bush the most brilliant man she had ever met (see [[15]]) and says he was the "best Governor ever" (see[[16]]). She also stated that "serving President Bush and Mrs. Bush is an impossible-to-describe privilege" and noted that Bush's personal qualities "make a brighter future for our nation and people all around the world possible." (see [[17]]).

Miers' last public speech was given to the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce on June 2, 2005.

On July 1, 2005, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced her intention to retire upon the confirmation of a successor. Bush appointed Miers as head of the search committee for candidates to replace O'Connor. On July 19, 2005, Bush announced John G. Roberts, Jr. as O'Connor's replacement. After William H. Rehnquist died of thyroid cancer on September 3, Bush withdrew this nomination and renominated Roberts for Chief Justice of the United States. The Senate confirmed the nomination on September 29.

Meanwhile, Senate minority leader Harry Reid (Democrat - Nevada), recommended Miers as O'Connor's successor [18] [19]. Bush took the recommendation seriously, factoring into account suggestions by several senators that the nominee should come from outside the appellate court system [20]. This caused several commentators to draw parallels with the 2000 election, when Dick Cheney, the head of Bush's vice-presidential search committee, was ultimately selected as the running mate [21].

On October 3, 2005, Bush nominated Miers to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Miers' nomination was criticized from people all over the political spectrum, based on her lack of judicial experience, her close personal ties to Bush, and her lack of a clear record on issues likely to be encountered as a Supreme Court Justice. Many notable conservatives vigorously criticized her nomination, and numerous conservative groups normally considered part of Bush's political base planned to mount an organized opposition campaign.

Further information: Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination and hearings#Reactions to her nominationspan

Early one-on-one meetings between Miers and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were said to have gone poorly, and the White House considered suspending them to focus on preparation for the confirmation hearings. In an unprecedented move, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter and ranking Senator Patrick Leahy also requested that Miers re-do some of her answers to the questionnaire submitted to her by the Committee, noting that her responses were "inadequate", "insufficient", and "insulting" because she failed or refused to adequately answer various questions with acceptable accuracy or with sufficient detail. Her answers also included an error on constitutional law where she mentioned a constitutional right for proportional representation which the Supreme Court previously ruled that did not exist. In addition, the Committee repeated its request to review internal White House documents that would illustrate her experience as White House Counsel and the constitutional issues she worked on.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) stated shortly afterwards that "I think, if you were to hold the vote today, she would not get a majority, either in the Judiciary Committee or on the floor." However, Specter, the committee chairman rejected the notion that Miers' nomination was shaky. He said that most senators were waiting for the hearings before making up their mind. "There are no votes one way or another", he said on CBS' . On October 19, 2005, Specter and Leahy announced their intent to begin confirmation hearings for Miers on November 7, 2005.

On October 27, 2005, the White House announced that Harriet Miers had asked President Bush to withdraw her nomination, citing fears that the nomination would create a "burden for the White House and its staff and it is not in the best interest of the country." President Bush stated that the Senate's interest in internal White House documents "would undermine a president's ability to receive candid counsel," and he had "reluctantly accepted" her request. Miers was the first Supreme Court nominee to withdraw since Douglas H. Ginsburg in 1987, and the seventh to do so in U.S. history.

Although many in Washington and in the media expressed surprise at Miers' decision to withdraw, the move was widely anticipated. Some commentators suggested the White House's staunch refusal to release documents relating to Miers' White House service provided a pretext for withdrawal.

Bush nominated Samuel Alito for the seat on October 31, 2005 and he was confirmed on January 31, 2006.

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