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Bush Supreme Court Nominee Former Microsoft Lawyer
DaveM writes "Bush's most recent Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers, successfully argued that people who were sold defective software by Microsoft weren't "injured," and couldn't participate in a class action against the company. The case involved unstable compression features in MS DOS 6.0, which were corrected by a $9.95 update, MS DOS 6.2. Plaintiffs wanted Microsoft to offer the updates for free, but eventually lost to Miers' arguments."
http://forums.go.com/abcnews/thread?threadID=23501 4
- involved/
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/10/02/bush-directly
CRISIS! DANGER!
A former mail clerk in GWB's oil company once used Microsoft Windows to play minesweeper. Now that mail clerk is the Janitor at Google! Does this mean Google is evil?
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Having the president appoint supreme court judges is wrong anyway. There should be a better process of selecting them. How's it done in other countries?
that'd be plutocracy
What was she supposed to argue? "My client is guilty."?
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
I can't say it's a great thing for America to have so many Republican justices, but I don't see how anyone can get wrapped up on this point? So she was good at her job. Is that something that we need to villify?
...and she did it well. Well enough to win a case that at least on grounds of common sense (which typically doesn't apply to legal rulings) she should've lost.
Are 'we' going to fault her for that ?
Microsoft pays well.
I fail to see any relevance to this story, beyond the usual anti-Microsoft rabble rousing.
I support the FairTax www.fairtax.org
Exactly what is the story here? Both sides had lawyers. Are you going to tell me that all the lawyers on the other side are shining knights of glory?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
This is such a non-story it's ridiculous. Miers was a lawyer for a private law firm. As such, they take cases and they represent their clients and advocate for them as best as they can.
What are you guys trying to get at here? That attorney's views are the same as their clients?
This story sucks, and slashdot is obviously trying to start a flamewar here. Nice trolling, Taco.
Rather that turning this into a political farce, for someone that has an axe to grind with this new nominee, let's cut to the chase here, and look at the key phrase in that article:
"Microsoft believed that only people who actually lost data had a right to sue; that those merely with faulty software hadn't been injured."
I hate Microsoft as much of the next guy, but I don't see what's wrong with this. It's basically saying "If you lost data, you can sue. If you didn't, you can't".
Sounds like the people that wanted to sue Microsoft, but didn't have anything go wrong for them, got caught.
Besides, there are plenty of other defects in Microsoft software they probably could have sued for instead.
I'm not ready to disqualify a supreme court nominee based on their having had as a client one of the richest corporations on the planet. She was head of the largest law firm in (Texas? Dallas?) and thus had available lawyers to devote to a case; Microsoft had money to pay them; that's normal.
I would object to this nominee based on her:
* committing unethical acts while representing them;
* arguing a totally untenable or specious position or otherwise demonstrating gross incompetence;
* obviously agreeing with her client in her private speech (indicating a personal position, not a professional representation of her client's position), where that client's position was representative of unethical behavior or attitudes, etc.;
* use of legal arguments based far outside of conventional legal mainstream thought (the Bork-Wacko factor).
It seems to me we should pay attention to ethics, competence, and political leanings that don't represent the broadly accepted norm, or if she's in the past said she will legislate from the bench (which I highly doubt given her lack of being a judge previously).
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
What stupidity. There are a bunch of reasons to criticize her: no judicial experience or constitutional scholarship; hell, she's just a Bush flunky. The fact that she was hired as an advocate for Microsoft isn't one of them. I mean, get some goddamn perspective.
He appoints nominees, the senate makes the final decision. If the senate doesn't like what they see, the democrats (the opposing party at the moment) can filabuster, or the senators will vote against her.
:P.
You need a single point to bring people into consideration. Otherwise what are they gonna do, have all 100 senators sit at a table and talk until they can find someone they all like? riiight, like that's gonna find someone quickly
-everphilski-
I'd be a little bit more concerned about the fact that she has no judicial experience. It's apaprently not *that* unusual; Rehnquist had none when he was nominated to the Court. Thomas had almost none. The gripe that I have with Roberts--only two years' experience as a judge before becoming the Chief Justice is an outrage--doesn't really apply here. Or rather, it wouldn't if there weren't already two sitting judges with very little judicial experience.
What's really a concern is that there are a bunch of people out there, and I forget who the talking heads were, for which I apologize, who are saying that Harriet Miers is not considered a legal scholar, but Just Another Corporate Lawyer. That's troubling to me, far more troubling than her work for Microsoft.
It's also troubling, of course, that this is Just Another Bush Crony getting a job, but the stakes are far, far higher than the stakes at FEMA under Brown and Chertoff. They can be fired or replaced. A Justice can't.
I was hoping he would nominate Janice Rogers Brown, a black female conservative Christian libertarian and daughter of a sharecropper, if only for the fun in watching the media and politicians desperately try to pigeon hole her. Thousands and thousands of exploding heads guaranteed with that one. Oh well...
Lawyers are hired to win cases. Lawyers frequently champion causes they don't personally support. It's their job to win their clients' cases. The job of a lawyer is not to be impartial or fair minded. You can't fault her for doing her job.
What concerns me more is that she has no experience being a judge so there's nothing really to base a judgement of how impartial or fair minded she would be as judge. You can't really know how she'll interpret the law until she's judged cases.
This goes back, in my opinion, to Bush hiring completely unqualified people for important positions, like Mike Brown at FEMA, only the consequences of this choice will reach much further into the future.
Once appointed, Supreme Court Justices are pretty much free to rise above the (nearly invisible) Republican/Democrat split if they so choose.
Individual Justices do tend to be either authoritarian or libertarian, and either punishment-oriented or goal-oriented, though; some people incorrectly assign these values to the parties (just because GWB is a punishment-oriented authoritarian doesn't mean those are the values of the people who are registered republicans).
If it makes you feel better, Harriet Miers has been reported to be a Gore supporter by the mainstream media.
I am personally bothered by this choice W. has offered. She is his personal laywer and has been for many many many years... she has never been a judge, a constitutional law scholar, or anything-- just a representative for political people and corporations. She should not be allowed to join the supreme court.
Short Version:
1. MS DOS 6.0 has bad compression software that doesn't work and can destroy your data.
2. Microsoft is sued because people bought something, didn't get what they thought they did and are forced to pay more to just get what they should have already had.
3. Supreme court nominee argues based on the technicality that the mere presense of the fault isn't enough to count as an "injury" but you need to actually have destroy data and since the suit wasn't brought forth on that basis, calls for dismissal.
4. Microsoft wins. Lawyers win. People loose.
So remember, if a contractor ever builds your house out of paper mache instead of bricks like he promised, sue only AFTER it collapses.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Has she ever suggested that it might be OK to wire up a guy's testicles to a car battery to get answers out of him, so long as he's not a USA citizen? Working for Microsoft isn't where this administration has set the bar. Shocking people's testicles is where this administration has set the bar. I just want a justice that won't have everyone's testicles wired up and ready to go 20 years from now! Who cares about the fetusses? Who cares about prior Microsoft experience? The testicles are where it's at!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A lawyer's employ is to defend the position of the client. In this case, she was a lawyer for Microsoft. If she had been a lawyer for anyone else, she would have defended their position with equal fervor. Now that she is likely to become a justice of the Supreme Court, her employ is to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and if she can successfully defend something as silly as MS-DOS 6.0, then she has my support in defending some of the silly things that come before the bench of the highest court in the nation.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
After re-reading this post of mine... I decided to put a pre-emptive disclaimer.. If you like Bush... Don't read further. In addition EraserMouseMan, this is not directed at you, it is simply a rant that your post sparked,and I agree with you... "So this article is just more fuel for the flames and really does nothing else." I agree with the other things you posted but this rant is an example of the above quote. ...
...
Yeah, but where the HELL were these people when it was time to vote?!?! In BOTH elections 2K and 2K4 I would have RATHER had ANYONE but HIM... In addition I would have voted for the independent party candidate but I knew my ONLY chance of keeping Bush out of office was Democrat and that failed too...
I certainly, am not happy about what has transpired since 2000... I hated the thought of "Monkeyboy" being in office in 2000 and with everything that has gone on since has furthered my assertion that I was right. He was a bad choice then and continues to be the wrong guy for the job...
He is bad at just about everything he does except one thing... He is somehow charismatic with the rednecks and impoverished people of the "red states"... I don't understand how, for example, in Iowa (and another 'I' state I don't remember) there are LINES Hundreds of people long waiting to get food because they are so poor and there are no jobs that they can't afford to put food on the table. Yet theses states went "red" in both elections...
I just can't figure it out... It's like a HUGE portion of this country has lost the intellectual/logical side of it's collective brain...
He continues to damage this country in numerous ways and yet lots of people like him, in fact, many love him still. I am not talking about the rich republicans that are obviously happy with him nor am I talking about the religious right that is happy with him either... I am talking about the "common" men and women that still like his decisions.
It confuses me to this day how this continues. It's like a bad dream. Every week I see something new in the news that he has decided or because of a person he chose for a position has screwed up SO badly that it is completely inexcusable yet "that's ok... He's just a little slow..."
No! He's the leader of THE MOST POWERFUL nation in the WORLD... If ANYONE of us (making less then $250K/year) were to screw up this frequently we be fired and be hard pressed to find another job... (Side Note: the $250K/year is a wag estimate, meaning those making about that much would find a financial way to weasel out of it)...
Oh well, this rant won't change anything but I at least won't "bottle it up".
. . . and the alternative to Bush, John Kerry, would have been better? The man who doesn't own SUVs but daily drives any one of seven owned by his wife? The same John Kerry who ((allegedly)) cheated his way into multiple purple hearts in his quest for an early discharge? The same John Kerry who was putting down those who did their duty and served our country? I live here in Taxachusetts and I can't stand John Kerry. In fact, I can't think of a single politician at higher state or Federal levels that I do not abhor. I vote against incumbants whenever there is a reasonable alternative, but in the last election I voted not for Bush, but against John Kerry. Granted, I checked the Bush box on the ballot, but that was because it was the only way to keep an even worse scumbag out of office. Both candidates suck, and I just fear that John Kerry would have done far, FAR more damage.
Oh, for the days of our parents when Republicans were really for smaller government, and Democrats really for the people. Now it's a matter of social engineering, controlling every facet of our personal lives, and profiteering without getting caught like Delay did.
Vote against incumbants, always, unless the alternative is far worse.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
And your mistake is assuming that it's pretending to be. It's a common mistake for some reason. Slashdot doesn't claim to be journalism, they don't claim to be original, and they don't claim to be unbiased.
I don't know where people manage to get the impression that a site run by a guy calling himself "Commander Taco" should be held to the same journalistic standards as CNN.
The Slashdot editors post stories that they'd want to read as Slashdot readers. Since the editors are heavily anti-Microsoft, pro-Apple, pro-Linux, pro-Unix, anti-Republican, etc, those are the sorts of stories that they post.
Complaining about "hidden" bias on Slashdot is like complaining about "hidden" bias in a press release or at the Democratic National Convention.
Have you ever taken a US history / constituion class?
It all goes back to check and balances for our three arms of the national government.
Why is it wrong to have the president appoint a SC justice with the advice and consent of the Legislative branch? Just because you hate W does not make the process "wrong". Billy boi Clinton appointed one of the most liberal SC justices ever and had her approved in a 96-4 vote in the Senate, with little to no bitching by the minority right (or was that majority right at the time?)
Thanks for the backup. Constructive replies, especially ones that link to other supporting pages, certainly help. The rightwing zombies have managed a balance between the alienation that inhibits their voicing doubts about their controlling masters, and the fake certainty that any opponents are lonely fringe players. Just seeing other people accepting the truth can turn a lot of these easily led dittoheads towards the truth that can set them free.
--
make install -not war
Look, I know /. readership is overwhelming left-of-center, but to post an article about Bush's lawyer being "related to Microsoft" is kind of silly. At some point the Bush-bashing just becomes pointless partisanship. So she made an argument for Microsoft back in the DOS 6.2 days. She also used to be Democrat and contributed to Al Gore's campaign fund. Big deal. Is this what passes for "News for Nerds"?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
How about...
the same John Kerry that can form complete sentences and speak coherently in public.
That was enough for me.
Kerry was more of a scumbag than Bush? Kerry was a flip flop median appeasing p-o-s politician, who actually served in Vietnam and ACTUALLY GOT WOUNDED in battle, Bush was a flip flop christian right appeasing p-o-s politician who had only held the 'governor...light' office in Texas and had failed at EVERY SINGLE business he attempted, but always got propped back up by his dad's friends, the Saudis, avoided Vietnam by having dad's connections jump him up on the list of the Texas air national guard and even illegally left his air guard unit to 'work on an Alabama campaign', joined a secret society and got the nick name 'temporary', sat around for 10 minutes looking confused when told of the attacks on 9/11 (and the DAY before his administration had issued reforms to cut counterterrorism funding, despite being fully briefed by the out-going Clinton administration about terrorism), got his lawyers to create a supposed loophole to suspend haebeus corpus and lock anyone up indefinitely without trial and USED IT, lied about nuclear weapons to start a war... that last bit alone is enough to never vote for him again.
There is probably enough 'bad' about Bush for the UN to put the son of a bitch in jail.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
So you don't call yourself a "liberal". Would you at least comment on how often you choose to vote for a Democrat against a Republican?
From your post I bet your mantra is not just "Anybody but Bush" but also "Anything but stereotypical Conservative". Correct? Conservative is logically the opposite of Liberal. Hence my point. "Independents" don't like being called "liberal" because of all the wackos that have dragged the name down to unpopularity. But in the end "independents" vote the same way liberals do.
So how does this not qualify as a "core feature" of that version?
I'm amazed at the ignorance on slashdot. I've lost count of how many people have said, "How can she qualified for SOCTUS if she's never been a judge?"
The simple fact is that she would not be the first justice to never have sit on the bench before. Most recently Chief Justice Rehnquist was never a judge before he served http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rehnquist. (Contrary to another poster, http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/marshall.htm Thurgood Marshall was a judge before he served.)
Of course, as some of you have pointed out, for a lawyer, what matters not are these cases where the laywer is paid for their work. Everyone (even rich companies) have the right to a solid defense. And in this case I actually agree with the decision- M$ should only be liable for data corruption that actually occured, not which might someday occur.
What does matter is what pro bono work she's done. This is where you find out what issues are important to her and gives better insight on how she would rule and write her opinions. Apparently she has been actively involved with trying to get other laywers to do pro bono work, so either she has a stack load of cases we can examine or she's a hypocrite.
how's that insightful?
... or any version that I can remember.
Brakes are a necessary component of a car -- you cannot operate a car without them.
Compression was not a necessary component of DOS 6.0
Bottom line: Compression's optional. Brakes aren't.
Sony ha
Instead of the citizen. Could have guessed that one considering she was appointed by a politician..
Or could it be she was just defending her client? She was being PAID by microsoft, it doesnt mean she actually supported the decision. Attorneys are not paid to make moral judgements, they are paid to defend their client and try to win. ( and of course to make money for themselves.. )
Perhaps now her client is 'the people', and she will fight for us.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why do people forget that BSA isn't just Microsoft. Apple, IBM,Dell and every other major software producer is a board member. Preston, Gates was lobbyiest for the BSA, i love how they connect it to Microsoft though.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I hereby declare her to be an evil baby-eating witch, who must NOT gain any Democratic votes for confirmation.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
wouldn't the world be a better place if... everyone could just abdicate any moral responsibility to their boss/government/organization and defend even the worst crimes by saying 'I was just following orders.'
There has to be a balance between 'making the system work' and people acting in ethical way -- and yes, however scary you find it, that means individual human beings deciding and acting on their personal morals.
Lawyers have a job, so do judges. A lawyers task is to argue any point, philosophy and set of facts and precedents that he/she thinks will favorably impact the outcome of the case for the client. They are essentially sales men. No sales person ever came to you and said "Hey I think this product is a pice of total crap personaly but anyway you should by one." No they keep the discussion focused on the virtue of the product. Working for Microsoft ment she had to convince those she was asked to speak with, be they judges, officials, customers or whoever, that Microsofts positions were sensible and legally correct, not that she personally felt that way. The fact she worked for Microsoft means only she was paid to do a job.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
... So, of course, she must be immediately disqualified.
And I made this statement where? Thanks for coming out.
Oh, and just because it has been done in the past, does not make it the best possible course to take. Yea, she may potentially be a great justice, that does not mean she is the best - and taht does not mean she is qualified right now to enter this position. Could she learn it, yea if she got this position she has the rest of her life to learn how to do the job....but then, there are the first years where she does not have the EXPERIENCE.
PLUS, since she is not a judge, I have no idea how she would have ruled over different issues - something that is very important to the people.
So until you can argue on my assumption's, keep your squander to yourself. Just so you realize - my assumption's is her lack of EXPERIENCE & lack of proof as to how she will act with regards to certain issues.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
For those of us who aren't happy with the idea of a judge who will make the GOP's philosophy the law of our land, for the rest of our lives, tough cookies. You had you're chance to change who'd be appointing our judges (or lawyers who will become judges) in 2004, and you blew it.
;-).
Regardless of *why* you think the left blew it (poor candidates, poor campaign strategies, failing to remove Diebold from the equation, whatever), it doesn't change the fact that the GOP alone is calling the shots on what people can and can't do for the next 3, and their judges will be doing it for the rest of your natural lives.
If people don't like this nominee, and she is defeated, Bush will merely appoint someone else who is as similiar to her as he can. And sooner or later, *one* of his nominees will be confirmed, and set the rules we'll all have to live by.
The only way that's going to change, is if people are *so* dissatisfied with the people he chooses that the gradually elect enough people who are similarly dissatisfied, and those people change the rule that judicial appointments are for life.
And the odds of that happening in our lifetimes is pretty freakin' slim, considering that only about 30% of us actually bother to vote in the first place.
I know this seems harsh to the left, but keep in mind this is coming from someone who's probably farther to the left that you are. I'd vote for Clippy before voting for a Republican. I just think we need to pick our battles at this point. And trying to fight against the inevitable outcome that our most conservative president yet, will put the most conservative people he can get into lifetime judicial appointments, just seems like spending an awful lot of effort to close the barn doors after the horses are long gone.
As technology experts, I think we'd get more out of spending our efforts pointing better ways of doing electronic voting, advocating better science and technology polices, and soon... devising 100% full-proof methods of birth control. And of course, developing reliable open-source data-compression that makes the outcomes of lawsuits relating to it failing, moot.
Justices generally recuse themselves from cases involving possible conficts of interest. Since she was Microsofts attorney, any case of theirs that reaches SCOTUS will likely trigger her recusing. So if she is pro-microsoft, even indirectly such as supporting the rights of large corporations, the balance of the court shifts against MS. On the other hand, if working with MS left a bad taste for corporations, having her off the case is a plus for MS.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I agree with her arguments about this class action lawsuit nonsense on trivialities. I would bet 99.9% of users of DOS 6.X didn't even know there was a compression program that came with it. Of those who had some vague inkling that this was a new "Feature" (i.e.: "a bug as defined by the marketing department" -- Manual for the Apple II circa 1979) very few used it. If they did use it, very few were "injured" because of it. And let's just pretend you WERE "injured" by losing some important data, why the hell didn't you create a backup before you tried something new on your precious bits and bytes? Don't plead ignorance there, plead stupidity, and that makes you culpable. Maybe it's you who needs to be sued (or fired) because you didn't use basic procedures to safeguard your data.
Yet an attempt was made to turn this into another of those infamous "class action suits," which means, really, that anyone can jump on the bandwagon and claim injury. You know: Notices in major newspapers and magazines, lots of fine print, years of parading in the press. And when all is said and done, if these things win, you might be eligible for a rebate worth a few bucks, maybe, if you send it in, which only a handful of people ever will. You know why Norton can pretend to offer you Systemworks for free at Fry's if you send in the multiple rebate forms. It's because you never will, and they know it. It may get you to buy it, but it's just too much of a hassle to bother when you get right down to it. Mission accomplished, chump!
Meanwhile, in this case, assuming it had been able to go forward, by the time it would have ended, DOX 6.X would have been history anyway. You would have upgraded to a faster box, guaranteed, with a new OS, just like you have since the dawn of IT history. So here's big, bad Microsoft that everyone loves to hate and hassle, with yet another frivolous lawsuit to deal with.
And who gets all the money? MILLIONS of dollars change hands in these things. You get nothing (but then, you weren't really injured), but the bucks go to the LAWYERS who made up all this stuff in the first place.
So good for her. She made a good argument and they made the right decision to toss such nonsense out of court.
(And, having said that, I think she is an extremely poor choice for the Supreme Court with no relevant experience at all.)
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You did a great job knocking down a straw man argument. Problem is, he never said "the UN could put him in jail" he said "[t]here is probably enough 'bad' about Bush for the UN to put the son of a bitch in jail." Big difference between the two. What he meant was that Bush has committed enough war crimes to be tried and convicted. Not that he ever would be. And I completely agree that he has committed enough war crimes to be tried and convicted.
Oh, you want clear cut?
It would be shockingly rare to find, and it certainly doesn't come from the kool-aide drinking left. Posts like this just leave me frustrated in that we need some real opposition to put an end to the cronyism of the current right. Apparently our choices are supposed to be left-wing tin-foil hat "Evil Haliburton under my bed" moonbats, or right-wing country club cronyism fat-cat good ol boy network crap. Delay's a total loser. But let's not leave out Harry "Leave the Check on the Counter" Reid (you don't get anything done in Nevada without paying off a Reid family member), Nancy "Just Nailed Again on More Charges Just Like Delay" Pelosi, etc. And let's not forget the mental misfits like Harkin, Biden and Dean, and everyone's favorite hypocrite Ted Kennedy. Add to that Orrin "Did I mention my son's an attorney you can hire" Hatch? Both parties are overwhelmed with these parasites.
Someone show me a party that values individual liberty (right to abortion and to gun ownership), personal property (right to my money and my property - no left-wing supreme court taking my property to give it to another crony of theirs), national security (dealing with terrorism, not pretending we can hug our enemies and they'll love us, while also shutting the borders down rather than look the other way so our business cronies can hire illegals at a fraction the fair labor rate), and I'm there.
Let me opt out of social security ponzi schemes and take full responsibility for my own retirement (money left under a mattress does better than social security), leave me out of prescription drug gifts for societies most affluent, highest disposable income segment (giving money gifts to seniors at the expense of young families is insane), and I'll take care of myself. Make me pay for my own flood/hurricane insurance, or accept the risk of losing my property if I don't - I will ask my government to steal money from my fellow slashdotters paychecks to bail me out for my irresponsibility.
I seriously doubt my Republican party will ever leave the country club. They're not interested in being the party of the little guy. But will someone please get some sanity back in the left and send the paranoid loons to get some desparately needed clinical help? You have no idea how many people might listen to your party if it wasn't so obsessed with seeing imaginary animals and secret conspiracies around every corner.