'Judicial Activism' to Be Thankful For

Illegally obtained evidence would have been deemed inadmissible in court?

Citizens accused of a crime would have been provided a lawyer if they couldn't afford one?

Citizens would have to be informed of their rights, including the right to remain silent and the right to counsel, before being questioned by police?

Public school boards would have been stopped from writing and adopting prayers for students to recite?

All citizens would have been guaranteed a constitutional "right to privacy"?

Who are the opponents of "liberal judicial activism"? There's no one-size-fits-all description. But some of the loudest voices belong to those who never liked the civil rights movement or the series of landmark cases that expanded rights under the Warren Court. They never saw a court-ordered desegregation remedy they could stand or a states' rights doctrine that didn't trump the rights of racial minorities.

They are the sort of folks who believed Arkansas Gov. Orville Faubus had a point when he used state troopers to block nine black students from entering Little Rock's Central High School even though it was under a federal court's desegregation order. They tend to disparage any and all decisions they don't like as the personal preferences of high-handed judges exceeding their jurisdiction. To them, anyone who spends time knocking down barriers faced by folks who are not white and male is automatically suspect.

Which explains why I knew Harriet Miers was doomed with conservatives. Last Sunday The Post published a story by Jo Becker and Sylvia Moreno that said that as president of the State Bar of Texas, Miers vowed to make the bar "inclusive of women and minorities." Miers, according to the story, "championed the cause of increasing the number of female and minority lawyers in the bar's own leadership ranks and in law firms across the state, writing that 'we are strongest capitalizing on the benefits of our diversity.' " To the right wing, them's fightin' words.

The mere idea that Miers supported a bar resolution that encouraged Texas law firms to hire more minority lawyers and that set aside a specific number of seats on the bar's board of directors for women and minorities was enough to make conservatives do back flips. Too much like the thinking of a "liberal activist judge."

In my book, however, Harriet Miers's determination to tear down racial and sexual barriers in Texas legal circles is a mark in her favor. Who knows? It might even have made Rosa Parks smile.

kingc@washpost.com