LA Times: Miers Eschewed Crusading, Worked Within the System

[highplainsdem]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-miers15oct15,0,2030822.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews


6:56 PM PDT, October 14, 2005 latimes.com : National News

Miers Eschewed Crusading, Worked Within the System
By Richard B. Schmitt, Times Staff Writer


<snipping paragraphs about Miers turning down a request that she help female law students at SMU file a class-action discrimination suit against the largest law firms in Dallas in 1975>

Her refusal to get involved in the discrimination suit squared with the Miers ethic: working the system, keeping her head down, working mule-like hours, and avoiding too many confrontations with her male superiors. It is an ethic that seems to have defined her more-than-30-year career, including her long association as a personal lawyer and adviser to Bush.

In a place like Texas in the 1970s, it might have been the smarter path to success for a young woman lawyer.

The men at the University of Texas law school would hold beauty contests, posting photos of good-looking female classmates on a school bulletin board and conducting a vote for the winner. Women students were not allowed into the legal honor society. In job interviews, when they managed to get them, young women lawyers were grilled about whether they practiced birth control. One newly minted lawyer recalled a Texas judge threatening her with jail for posing as a lawyer until she produced her bar membership card.

<snip>

Like other women, she was shunted aside at the private clubs atop the skyscrapers of Dallas, where deals were made and prospective clients were wined and dined by the men of the firm. At lunch, women were forced to eat in separate dining quarters, which some called the Jim Crow rooms.

<snip>

[Democrats_win]

1. "First they came for the Jews...." Now they're coming for you, Harriet.

[JI7]

2. does this mean she will vote according to whatever way

Scalia demands of her ?

[Patchuli]

3. She learned to like the tast of boot!

:thumbsdown:

[VegasWolf]

4. She certainly has a demonstrated ability to change sides like a chameleon!