OPINION:
Last month, Washington lost one of its most colorful characters, the lawyer and activist Manuel Miranda. Manny played an outsize role in the life of our nation and in the life of Catholic America.
Born in Cuba and raised initially in Spain, Manny grew up in Queens, New York, before moving to Washington to attend the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He then went to California for law school.
After decades in corporate law, Manny transitioned to politics, serving as counsel to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and then legal counsel to the Senate majority leader during the judicial battles of President George W. Bush. At the time, liberal advocates and their Senate allies had a well-earned reputation for dominating judicial confirmation battles, having successfully defeated the conservative scholar Robert Bork with a brutal combination of political attacks, ad campaigns and media hit pieces that left Republicans stunned. They nearly succeeded a second time with the bruising fight over Justice Clarence Thomas.
The filibuster of Mr. Bush’s conservative appeals court nominees was a new escalation in the judicial wars, seen as a warning shot to the White House not to nominate conservatives to the high court. More than a few Republicans saw it as a losing issue. Better to nominate consensus candidates and otherwise focus on tax cuts and the war on terror.
Manny saw this as profoundly wrong and believed judges could be populist winners if Republicans were willing to take the issue to the country.
In the Senate, he played the essential role, organizing the coalition that fought the filibuster, positioning Democrats as extreme on social issues and helping pave the way for today’s conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Manny coordinated multiple explosive hearing showdowns in the Judiciary Committee over Hispanic nominee Miguel Estrada, Black nominee Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and the Catholic Bill Pryor. He orchestrated a never-before-seen 40-hour, round-the-clock debate over the filibustered nominees on the Senate floor and helped develop the “nuclear option” to change Senate rules so judicial confirmations couldn’t be filibustered.
Judicial confirmations, especially at the appellate level, had never been such a hot topic across the country. Manny cultivated journalists from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, as well as The Washington Post, The New Yorker and The New York Times, and he always provided good copy.
When Republicans made unexpected gains in the off-cycle election in 2002, Bush political strategist Karl Rove confirmed that judicial confirmations were a significant factor. Ultimately, Democratic moderates broke ranks, and the filibusters were dropped, leading not only to the confirmation of the blocked nominees but, a few months later, to the nomination and confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court.
Manny wasn’t afraid to fight his own party when necessary. After leaving Capitol Hill, he became the first prominent conservative to publicly oppose President Bush’s nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Manny argued that Ms. Miers, a corporate lawyer, lacked constitutional expertise and that Republicans had fought too hard to support a relative unknown to the high court. A flood of conservatives followed his lead, and the White House, to its great consternation, was forced to withdraw the nomination.
The result was the nomination and successful confirmation of Samuel A. Alito Jr., arguably the court’s top conservative after Justice Thomas. Manny was thrilled when Justice Alito penned the landmark Dobbs decision, reversing Roe v. Wade.
During the Iraq War, Manny served at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, advising the prime minister’s legal office as the embassy’s first director of legislative affairs. Among his accomplishments was negotiating the reconciliation of Iraq’s and Kurdistan’s bar associations, improving access to nonsectarian justice for the Iraqi people. Upon his return, he published a prescient memo on his time in Iraq, warning that the U.S. was bungling the reconstruction and risked losing the peace.
Manny’s other major area of work was Catholic activism, particularly as it pertained to Georgetown University. As a young man, he sued and beat the university on behalf of the alumni association to keep the association legally and financially independent. He later sued the university in the Vatican’s Canonical Court for its funding of an abortion rights club on campus. The Vatican agreed, and the university was forced to end the funding.
Manny also helped organize an ecumenical coalition of students to protest the university’s decision to remove crucifixes from its classrooms, which led to national publicity and a rebuke from the university’s board of directors. Shortly afterward, Georgetown’s famously liberal president, the Rev. Leo O’Donovan, SJ, resigned.
A prolific writer and speaker, Manny authored more than 35 columns, including for this paper, published scholarly articles, lectured at more than 40 law schools and made hundreds of appearances in English and Spanish media.
Manny used to quote Gen. George Patton: “L’audace, toujours l’audace!” (Audacity, always audacity!) Manny’s life was a testament to what one man with charisma, a savvy for institutional process and audacity can do to shape our institutions. He was a beloved mentor to hundreds of students at Georgetown and the founder of its leading debate societies, often saying, “Debate is the servant of truth.”
His legacy will be carried forward by the many he touched in his always interesting life.
• Sean Rushton lives and works in Washington.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.