Linda Campbell 
A court-side seat at the constitutional game
Star-Telegram Staff Writer
You never would have known that the woman had been pilloried in the national media, found in contempt of Congress and sued by the House Judiciary Committee.
When Harriet Miers spoke about Law Day on Tuesday at the Tarrant County Bar Association luncheon in Fort Worth, she was bar executive director Patricia Graham's old pal, the role model for bar President Melody Wilkinson from when the latter was still a baby lawyer, and the dignitary with whom local judges wanted to snap a picture.
For a former White House counsel and one-time State Bar of Texas president, not to mention a controversial Supreme Court nominee, Miers comes across as unassuming rather than commanding. She started out with a fairly predictable discourse on the grandeur of a government based on the rule of law instead of the rule of man. But if you listened between the lines, you heard a couple of revelations.
For one thing, she sort of has a sense of humor.
To contrast U.S. freedom with the oppression of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Miers told of a priest whose parents sent him to this country when he was 8 years old. He now preaches at an Episcopal church across from the White House where she as well as George and Laura Bush have attended.
"I'm not going to talk about all his views. That's a bit dangerous these days," she said, in a clear allusion to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Later, she quoted from dialogue on Boston Legal, lamenting, "Where's Perry Mason when we need him?"
And she coyly referred to "a current case involving congressional subpoenas to an existing and one former adviser" to the president, calling it "a drama in which I have a tiny role."
Actually, being the first defendant named in a lawsuit by the House Judiciary Committee would qualify as a lead dramatic role -- of potentially constitutional proportions.
The committee sued Miers and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten in March after they followed Bush's directive and refused to testify under congressional subpoena about the forced resignations of nine U.S. attorneys. The dismissals, which Democrats portray as politically motivated, helped drive Alberto Gonzales from the attorney general's job.
Miers told the luncheon audience that when she was studying separation of powers and other constitutional principles in school, "I never anticipated it would come about that their application would become so personal."
When Star-Telegram reporter Max Baker and I tried afterward to get her to elaborate on the lawsuit, she didn't want to discuss the merits of the case because it's ongoing.
But here's what she did say:
"This is our government at work. We talk about the Constitution all the time, and students in school read about it and are taught about it. This is a real issue, and it's being litigated in the courts. ... That's the design of our Constitution. It's an opportunity to see the Constitution actually function and work."
Funny she should put it that way. Last week, Justice Department lawyers filed a brief telling U.S. District Judge John Bates that the courts have no business in the dispute but that he should rule for the administration anyway and dismiss the suit.
"Never in American history has a federal court ordered an executive branch official to testify before Congress, and never in American history has the executive branch been required by court order to produce documents or a privilege log to Congress," the brief argued. "For over 200 years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise and, when necessary, have exercised the panoply of political tools at their disposal to resolve their differences through mutual accommodations."
The Justice Department argued that "the committee's claim for judicial relief ignores well-established constitutional limits on the legislative branch, as well as the judiciary, and would lead the courts into wholly uncharted waters."
Miers, who's back in private practice doing litigation and government affairs counseling, said that all sides in the executive privilege showdown had hoped to resolve the dispute, but "now it's in the hands of the judiciary, which is the way the system works."
I wondered, though, how much say she really has on whether the case settles soon or gets litigated to the bitter end. She declined to discuss that aspect.
Despite Miers' idealistic characterization, I can't imagine the administration seeing this as a grand teachable moment.
lcampbell@star-telegram.com
