Stealth nominees

The great Miers mystery

In the future, presidents of both parties are likely to prefer "stealth" nominees like Ms Miers. This will have two harmful consequences. First, appointments will become more like the lottery Ms Miers once ran. No matter how good a judge of character a president may be, he will find it tougher to pick dazzling jurists if he excludes from his search judges with a long record of judging hard cases and academic lawyers with a long history of debating controversies with their peers.

Second, if obscurity is to be rewarded, the most ambitious lawyers will shy away from writing articles for law reviews or expressing clear opinions in public. That will surely stultify debate about the proper role of the law in America—hardly a trivial matter in the most legalistic society on earth.