Rehnquist Had NO Prior Judge Experience Either

By Annie B. on October 4, 2005 9:32 AM | No Comments

The MSM is making much of the fact that Harriet Ellan Miers "lacks experience as a judge."

In my local paper, The Connecticut Post, today's front page article mentions this in its headline and its opening sentence....lest we somehow not get it "right" that she's "patently unqualified."

One must read through to the eighteenth paragraph, after hearing the N.O.W. president's opinion (listed before any pro-life group's opinion), to find out a truth I haven't heard yet elsewhere (please, correct me if I'm wrong):

"John Pavia, an adjunct professor at The Quinnipiac University School of Law, said [that,] absent a 'skeleton in her closet,'...[he] anticipates that Miers will be easily confirmed. As to her lack of bench experience, Pavia said that dozens of justices have been nominated with no prior experience as judges--including the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

"'It is not unprecedented,' Pavia said."

For some reason, the newspaper has no online link to this article while it does for every other article in today's paper. It does have a link to a different, Associated Press article, I've just found, which does reference this, stating: "Nineteen other justices previously had never served as judges before getting on the high court."

Even still, it doesn't seem that many news sources really want us to know these facts. Even AP buried this in their seventeenth paragraph, while mentioning her lack of experience in their third paragraph.