Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy posts some excerpts from Harriet Miers’s writings and observes,
We all make typographical errors… but her writing has that airy feel of someone trying to sound important by regurgitating empty platitudes… Note the incorrect comma in the last sentence and the plodding first sentence….
[I]f these are representative examples of Harriet Miers’ writings, she will be among the least able writers to serve on the Court in recent years. In my opinion, the majority of students whom I supervise for independent senior research projects at Northwestern Law write better prose than the passages published in the Texas Lawyer under Harriet Miers’ name.
These are serious and substantial arguments against Miers’s confirmation, right down to the last comma. Imprecise writing — yes, even imprecise punctuation — signifies imprecise thinking, or laziness, or both.
(And yes, I know that the standard rule is to write Miers’ confirmation, not Miers’s confirmation. I prefer the latter, as do Strunk and White; Miers is not the plural of Mier. We don’t write the dress’ hem or the Mass’ conclusion or Minneapolis’ mayor, do we? Perhaps someday the rest of the English-speaking world will come around and see it my way.)
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