The Art of Negotiation
-- PoliPundit
Marisa Katz, writing in the liberal New Republic, says that conservatives will like Miers’ role on the Court:
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When he was still new to the Court, [Justice William] Rehnquist wrote so many solo dissents that his clerks awarded him a Lone Ranger doll. While he succeeded in proving he had strong opinions, he didn’t have much impact. By the time the young John Roberts came to clerk for him in 1980, however, Rehnquist had learned a thing or two about strategy. And that, more than any changes to the makeup of the Court (only John Paul Stevens had joined in the interim), made the difference.
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Chief Justice Roberts, and perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent an Associate Justice Miers, could fill the role of Chief Negotiator Rehnquist. Both appear to be loyal conservatives and are therefore likely to land with some consistency to the right of center. With careful reasoning, they could expect to pull reluctant justices their way. (Roberts showed himself to be that kind of team player while on the D.C. Circuit, writing only three dissents.) At the same time, Roberts and Miers are unlikely to take such extreme positions that they would push the key centrist, namely Anthony Kennedy, into the embrace of the more liberal justices. The result would be more majorities writing conservative interpretations of the law. Those opinions may not be as radical as some may have wished. But they would be binding opinions, not Lone Ranger dissents.
The number of right-leaning opinions could increase further still if the Supreme Court were to increase its caseload. Roberts has supported the idea. “They hear about half the number of cases they did 25 years ago,” he said in his nomination hearings. “There may be good reasons for that that I’ll learn if I am confirmed. But just looking at it from the outside, I think they could contribute more to the clarity and uniformity of the law by taking more cases.”
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