Conservative Texas justice offers insider's insight on Miers
By Pete Slover
The Dallas Morning News
October 5, 2005 AUSTIN – Like an author on a radio talk-show blitz, Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht worked the phones Tuesday on a mission authorized at the highest levels of the White House: lending his conservative stamp of approval to Harriet Miers, his longtime friend, churchmate and fellow Dallas lawyer. "It has filled a void," Justice Hecht said of his interviews with about 90 reporters since President Bush nominated Ms. Miers to the Supreme Court. "You're looking at an accomplished, able, solid, consistent person. Not an opportunist, not a grandstander; hard-working and – in the end – enormously successful." But before saying a word, Justice Hecht notified top Bush adviser Karl Rove, who had been a consultant to the jurist's Supreme Court campaigns. "I told them that people were calling me and I was going to talk to them," he said. "And they said, 'Fine.' "I assume that what they thought is that because I know her and because they want her record to come out, people like me and others who know her should talk to the press," Justice Hecht said. "But Karl didn't say, 'Return all these calls,' or, 'Don't return them.' Or, 'Say this' or 'Don't say that.' He just said, 'Fine.' " Those hungry for clues on Ms. Miers' position on abortion have been especially interested in hearing from Justice Hecht, because he wrote important court opinions on Texas' parental-consent law. "Hecht does have a lot of credibility in my mind," said Joe Pojman, director of Texas Alliance For Life. "He strongly respected parents' rights, the rights of parents to protect their daughters from abortion." Mr. Pojman said that more important than Ms. Miers' position on abortion is her commitment to respect "the original intent of the authors of the Constitution and amendments." But an abortion-rights supporter familiar with Justice Hecht's rulings said that such statements could mask opposition to privacy rights, gay rights and access to contraception. "If you have somebody like Nathan Hecht, whose anti-choice, right-wing credentials are so solid, and he says you're going to like her, she's one of us, that sends a pretty clear signal to that wing of the Republican Party," said Sarah Wheat, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas. Justice Hecht has acknowledged that the woman he has known and dated over three decades has long attended a church whose tenets include opposition to abortion and gay rights. But it would be wrong, he said, to assume that she would use the bench to promote those opinions. Although judges and nominees might feel morally certain about an issue, they cannot commit to ruling one way or another, he said. "The mistake is trying to extrapolate from those personal principles, even if they're extremely important to a person, into how you're going to decide a case," Justice Hecht said. "Because I've been a judge for 24 years, and you just can't do it." He noted that Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the Supreme Court's most conservative justices, wrote an opinion declaring a free-speech right to burn an American flag. "Can you imaging Justice Scalia burning a flag? It's not going to happen," he said. "But what does the Constitution say, can you do it or not? Yes, the Constitution says you can do it." E-mail pslover@dallasnews.com
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