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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."
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?
--
make install -not war
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.
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!
Uh, how is that a flame? It's a fact. Bush's latest nominee used to be a lawyer for Microsoft. Whoopty-doo. How would you prefer they put it? "Bush court nominee hugs fuzzy bunnies, gives flags to orphans"?
Another one bites the dust
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.
They shoot the judges that used to be there, and install new judges.
"Bush bans oil! All cars must run on skittles and drive on rainbows"
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.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
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-
Appointment of a supreme court judge by the president is absolutely essential; our forefathers specifically designed our federal goverment that way . This directly corresponds to the checks and balances between the three branches of goverment that every US student learned in social studies class (in this case, the executive over the judiciary).
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.
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.
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?
In soviet Russia supreme court selects you.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Clinton was impeached for a blowjob.
Bush lied to the entire country and troops are dying, plus he's nominating his own personal lawyer with NO experience as a judge, to the Supreme Court. We seriously need an impeachment here.
(Hot dang, this place is thick with neo conservative mods!!)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
> Uh, how is that a flame? It's a fact. Bush's latest nominee used to be a lawyer for Microsoft.
Just because someone can argue a point for someone (remember that was her JOB to give MS's argument, not her own preference) it does not automatically mean they believe it to be correct.
wouldn't it be, "In Soviet Russia, Supreme Court selects president"? oh, wait...
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
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.
OCO is Loco
It's like people expect lawyers to have scruples or something.
Yeah, lawyers who zealously represent their cllients even when they personally disagree are like those scumbag doctors who'll treat just about anyone. I mean, wouldn't the world be a better place if Christian doctors refused to treat homosexuals, and liberal doctors refused to treat Republicans? Of course not. And just like medical care, the legal system only works if everyone has the best counsel available to them.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
if he wasn't Christian, the liberals would not have a problem with the guy.
Respectfully, I beg to differ.
My disgust with Dubya has nothing to do with the fact that he is religious. It has to do with the fact that he is a dangerous neo-con with absolutely no regard for the opinions or suffering or others. And believe it or not but liberals can be religious too. We just don't believe in forcing it on people the way that members of the far-right do.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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
You'll know a tree by it's fruit.. that's one bad apple. I think the expression was What Would Jesus Do... not Who Would Jesus Bomb.
Bush may play the religious right like a cheap fiddle... but he's no Christian by his actions. (Yes I am a Christian and I do read the Bible and am sick of how popular this wolf in sheeps clothing is).
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
if he wasn't Christian, the liberals would not have a problem with the guy
I suspect you are trolling. Regardless, all of the presidents we have had at least in the 20th/21st century have been Christians.
There was this guy you might remember who was President a while back called Jimmy Carter who was extremely liberal and a Christian.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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).
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
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.
Argh. Bush is not religious. He just labels himself as such because it works for him politically. I am "religious" and I can't stand the man. He is fake and simply a puppet for the GOP. I am also a Southerner and his "Good Ole' Boy" (simple and honest, my ass) routine is just as fake, simply something that works for him politically.
Many top-tier firms, including the one for which I am currently employed, require all associates to perform a percentage of billable hours on a pro-bono basis. In my case, it is at least sixty hours per attorney per year, or three percent of billable hours. That is approximately equal to a week's work.
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
If you are a Republican: Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens and Kennedy.
If you are a Democrat: Roberts (formerly Rhenquist), Thomas, Scalia, sometimes O'Connor and Kennedy. Both sides hate Kennedy. Since Miers is a Bush appointee she is by definition an activist to Democrats and will not get the benefit of O'Connor's "sometimes."
If you are conservative, your non-activist Hero is Scalia, who believes that constitutions and statutes should be interpreted according to the words written in light of their meaning at the time they were written.
If you are a liberal, your non-activist Hero is Ginsburg because that tight bun is just so dang SEXY!!!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
i agree. religion is a tool. all presidents are "religious" because that's the only way they'll be elected. JFK had enough trouble because he picked the wrong religion.
The difference between republicans and dems on the issue of religion is that republicans are willing to use religion to justify taking away people's rights (the abortion issue), are willing to destroy science curriculums in public schools (evolution and "intelligent design" issues), and they don't seem to understand the concept of seperation of church & state.
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.
Even if 9-11 was 100% down to Saddam, are you saying it's valid to exchange 26,000 Arab lives to "prevent" a fluke incident that killed 3,000? Cares about others? What the hell are you smoking? And the 26,000 is 100% civilian. No one is even counting the deaths of those who take up arms. Say double that number perhaps, unless you want to admit that the civilian losses to war losses are less than 2:1, right?
He's either evil or stupid. Take your pick. I personally don't think he's dumb, just not very proficient at public speaking.
he does seem to regard the well-being of people -- or at least the "opinion" of the American public.
Well, duh. Post Katrina, if he hadn't shown intense interest he'd be out of a job right now. He cares about your opinion only because he has to. "Approval ratings lowest ever" was the news story that made him "care".
Oh, and don't even attept the "bi-partisan" bullshit, I'm not even from the USA so that system of avoiding debate won't work here. He is the worst president in years and he has done immeasuable harm to America. People will be flying planes into buildings for the next 50 years thanks to the hatred he stirred up. And I don't believe that was an accident, Rummy etc have been quoted as saying they'd like to incite violence in order to root them out. Caring? Are we talking about the same people? They care about no one but their investors.
You sir, are scum. You are defending a murderer. An armed robber of the highest order.