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."

Comments

Indictments at the Gates

[Doc Ruby]

How long before people connect the "Gates"? From the "Preston, Gates" firm connecting Abramoff to the rest of the Republican indictment gang, to the "Gates" whose giant monopoly was released from liability by the Republicans?

Both sides

[skydude_20]

Miers argued for Microsoft and the new chief justice John Roberts argued for the states against Microsoft, so at least we know the discussions between the two will be lively behind the scenes of the courtroom.

Re:You know, here's a news flash...

[dAzED1]

Reinquist, among many others, had never been a judge before serving on SCOTUS.

Re:Wrong process anyway

[KiltedKnight]

Miers Gave to GOP Candidates, Democrats

My guess is that Miers is not necessarily going to be as conservative as some people might think. In fact, she may turn out to be a bit more liberal than several prominent Republicans might like. Of course, like you said, you can never tell what a person is going to be like once they are confirmed and on the bench until they start deciding cases.

And to follow on with your comment about David Souter, a Reagan apointee, Anthony Kennedy, once voted on a case a certain way because he felt it was the "conservative" way to vote. Then, having been tasked with writing the majority opinion, he realized what he was writing wasn't what he truly felt, and ended up changing his vote and swinging the case in the other direction.

Ford never expected Justice Stevens to become as liberal as he is either.

mathematics degree

[PMuse]

One thing that differs about Miers from most of the court -- her undergraduate degree (mathematics).

The others are Roberts (liberal arts), *O'Connor (economics), *Rehnquist (political science), Breyer (liberal arts, math, science), Ginsburg (government), Kennedy (liberal arts, economics), Scalia (history), Souter (liberal arts), Stevens (english literature), Thomas (seminary, english).