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Jim Lindgren on Mier's writing
On the Volokh Conspiracy, Jim Lindgren has a commentary on the nominee's writing style. "It has been said of Justice Blackmun that he realized his own intellectual limitations, leaving the hard job of drafting his opinions to his clerks, reserving to himself the easier task of substantively cite-checking what his clerks wrote. Unless Miers' writing has improved since 1992 (and it may well have), she might take a leaf from Justice Blackmun's book."
This might be the first nomination where Senators sought the nominee's internal memos from the last ten years, not to find out their position, but to examine them as writing samples.
Lindgren points out Randy Barnett's op-ed opposing the nomination, as a contrast -- the op-ed is much better written than any writing sample we now have from the nominee.
Thoughts: (1) this might be the ultimate stealth nominee, where the Prez. knows how they'll vote, but nobody else does (or at least, can prove it); (2) this might also prove the risk of such nominees, where the one assessing them is himself not exactly long on knowledge of constitutional law, and discussions between the two have focused upon policy matters. (I rather doubt they've had much discussion of when you can aggregate activity under the Commerce Clause or other interesting comtemporary issues).
You may want to update your post as Jim Lindgren has done. It seems that this premature crowing over Miers’ “undistinguished writing” turned out to be based on a typographical error from Lexis Nexus which turned the words “freedom of religion” into “freedom of liberties” (which is what Miers had actually written).