Huh, maybe I’ll end up supporting Harriet Miers after all, if she keeps saying things like this:
[S]everal constitutional law scholars said they were surprised and puzzled by Miers’s response to the committee’s request for information on cases she has handled dealing with constitutional issues. In describing one matter on the Dallas City Council, Miers referred to “the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause” as it relates to the Voting Rights Act.
“There is no proportional representation requirement in the Equal Protection Clause,” said Cass R. Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago. He and several other scholars said it appeared that Miers was confusing proportional representation — which typically deals with ethnic groups having members on elected bodies — with the one-man, one-vote Supreme Court ruling that requires, for example, legislative districts to have equal populations.
Okay, in reality it’s a little appalling that we’re about to get a Supreme Court Justice who doesn’t have even a passing familiarity with this country’s founding document. Still, it would be pretty interesting if there was a “proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause.”
