President George W. Bush announced his nomination of Harriet Miers for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Monday.

Miers was nominated to fill the seat vacated by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who resigned July 1 citing personal reasons for leaving the nation's highest court.

"Harriet Miers has a long and distinguished career as one of the foremost lawyers in the country," Christine Mangi, communications director for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said. "She's exceptionally well qualified to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, and importantly, she will strictly interpret the Constitution and laws of the U.S. and not legislate from the bench."

Mangi said Miers has been a "female trailblazer" in the legal system — Miers was the first woman hired at Dallas's Locke, Purnell, Rain & Harrell law firm, she was the first woman to be elected president of the State Bar of Texas and has represented major corporations such as Microsoft, Walt Disney Co. and SunGard Data Systems Inc.

Most recently, Miers served as counsel to the president since Bush appointed her to that position in February of this year.

University of Wisconsin Professor of Political Science Charles Franklin said there were other prospective nominees who some thought the president would be more likely to choose, but the nomination of Miers is not surprising.

"There were a lot of people that were mentioned more frequently than [Miers] was, but she would usually be mentioned as someone who the president might conceivably turn to," Franklin said.

However, those who oppose Miers' nomination question her legal experience with the court system and say too little is known about her career and opinions on key issues.

"The only way to find out where she stands on things like precedent, the right to privacy and all these important issues that are going to come up in the next year on the Supreme Court is through looking at her records since she was made White House counsel," Brian Shactman, chair of College Democrats, said. "Considering what happened with the Roberts nomination, we're probably not going to have access to those records."

Shactman said the White House's reluctance to release certain records about newly appointed Chief Justice John Roberts' opinions is an indication the president will also keep Miers' records private.

Though many liberals take issue with the nomination, Franklin said the initial reaction from Republicans has also been contentious.

"Conservatives are very concerned that she is not a true conservative of the [Justice] Scalia or [Justice] Thomas type, which they believe President Bush has promised for the last five years," Franklin said. "From the point of view of liberals, the fact that President Bush is picking her certainly means that he at least doesn't believe she is a judicial liberal."

Democrats also emphasized the fact that Miers has never been a judge.

However, Franklin said it is not unusual for a nominee to the Supreme Court to not have experience behind the judicial bench, citing the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist as the most recent justice who didn't have a prior position as a judge.

"It's not at all unprecedented, and it's easy to pick out a handful of 20th-century Supreme Court Justices who had no prior court experience," Franklin said. "But it's certainly a small percentage of all justices, especially if we rule out the 19th century when the legal system was different."

Though most past appointees have worked as law clerks for the Supreme Court or for the Federal Court of Appeals, Miers does not have experience in either, Franklin added.

"I don't think the lack of judicial experience in it of itself is a barrier, if you look at Justice Roberts, he had only been on the Federal Appeals Court for about two years," Franklin said. "It's not as huge of a deal as other questions about her background and strengths are."

If Miers' nomination to the high court is confirmed, it could mean significant changes to rulings made by the court, Shactman said.

"When Roberts replaced Rehnquist you had a very conservative justice being replaced by a conservative," Shactman said. "And now you have a moderate justice who has really been the swing vote the last 10 years on the Supreme Court being replaced by somebody who is probably going to be quite a bit more conservative than O'Connor."