Local History

By Jim Calvin

In November 1987, as President Ronald Reagan prepared to try again to fill a Supreme Court vacancy after two misfires, Second Circuit US Court of Appeals Justice Roger Miner stood among three final candidates for the nomination.

It was the penultimate step in the remarkable legal career of Hudson, New York’s favorite son, a journey illuminated by a phrase reverently spoken by his immigrant grandparents: “Only in America.”

Yet, despite impeccable credentials – and intense behind-the-scenes campaigning by his politically savvy wife Jacqueline – Judge Miner (1934-2012) lost the nod to Anthony Kennedy. There are conflicting accounts as to why, both involving the powder-keg issue of abortion.

The first account

Representing one version, Jackie later told the Associated Press that when asked by Reagan’s vetting team where he stood on the issue, Miner replied that he supported a woman’s right to an abortion. She said he felt ducking the question would tarnish his reputation – “too big a price to pay for a seat on the Supreme Court.”

However, Roger’s younger brother Lance, who has practiced in the Miner family law firm since 1979, doesn’t recall him ever declaring a position. Rather, the anti-abortion community distrusted his silence on the topic, weakening his candidacy. “It probably didn’t help that he didn’t express a firm opinion on it,” Lance acknowledged.

Either way, having pledged to choose only pro-life judges, Reagan crossed Miner off the list. Appearing at Albany Law School the next day, Miner reflected on the outcome. “Being a judge means keeping an open mind, being subject to persuasion, weighing, listening, studying, reasoning … avoiding rigidity and ideology,” the Albany Times Union quoted him as saying. “This approach to judging, I’m told, may be the reason I didn’t draw the winning ticket in Washington.”

What would Miner think?

It was vintage Roger Miner: Principled, provocative, fiercely independent. His voluminous writings and speeches manifested a loathing for partisan interference with the judiciary. Which makes it intriguing now to ponder, 38 years later, how Miner might view today’s Supreme Court, mired as it has become in curious behavior, confusing decisions, and ethical lapses.

“One thing he wouldn’t like is an ideologically driven court,” said Will Barclay, the current Republican Minority Leader of the New York State Assembly, who clerked for Miner on the Second Circuit in 1995-96. “He would resist any incursion from the political world into the court system. I think he’d be very protective about any intrusion upon the court’s independence.”

“Politicization of the court and the nomination process was really abhorrent to Roger Miner,” observed Michael Roffer, who clerked for him in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York and then in the Second Circuit. Roffer now serves their alma mater, New York Law School, as interim director of its Mendik Library and professor of legal research.

Individual Supreme Court justices – mainly members of the conservative majority – have been under scrutiny for accepting undisclosed loans, travel, and/or gifts, socializing with partisan politicians and activists, even prodding public institutions to buy their books as part of speaking engagements. One flew a symbolic upside-down American flag at his home. Another sold property – the day after being sworn in – to the head of a law firm with business before the court. Drafts of key decisions have been leaked. 

As US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) put it in a July 2024 press release, “The Supreme Court is facing a legitimacy crisis.” She backs legislation requiring SCOTUS to adopt a code of conduct, set forth steps for investigating violations, and ensure transparency when a justice has some connection to a party before the court. A code the justices previously self-imposed lacks any enforcement mechanism. Senator Gillibrand was one of Judge Miner’s court clerks in 1992-93.

Supreme Court confirmation proceedings had lost all pretense of collegiality earlier in 1987 when Reagan nominated one of the aforementioned “misfires,” Robert Bork. Following hearings drenched in personal and political vitriol, the Senate rejected him, 58-42. “Judge Miner,” said Roffer, “recognized that as a real turning point in the whole process, because from that moment forward, he felt direct answers would never again be provided.”

He called to mind Biden nominee Ketanji Jackson-Brown being asked by a Republican Senator at her 2022 confirmation hearing to define what a woman was. She replied that since she was not a biologist, she couldn’t. Roffer winced imagining how Miner would have viewed that exchange. “She couldn’t be honest,” Roffer lamented. “Nominees have to be so guarded now in what they say that their answers become meaningless. It’s just become a show for Congress more than an earnest process to select the best judges. Judge Miner would have been absolutely outraged by that.”

In other rulings

In the explosive 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, the high court held 6-3 that the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion, thereby overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, leaving it to the states to regulate abortions and triggering a national firestorm over reproductive rights.

“I’m confident in saying (Miner) would have appreciated the result in the Dobbs case,” said Roffer. “Not because he had a view on abortion – because as far as I knew, he didn’t – but he was very much a Federalist. He believed in states’ rights, and that abortion is an issue that should be determined on a state-by-state basis.”

Lance Miner corroborated Roger’s commitment to states’ rights but noted he also was generally reluctant to overturn well established doctrine, thus it’s unclear which side he would have taken.

Hudson beginnings

Born in Hudson 90 years ago in the depths of the Depression, Roger Jeffrey Miner was firmly rooted in Columbia County and the American ideal. His grandparents Frank and Feige “Fannie” Meiner had left the village of Tourna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1909 and sailed for New York Harbor, where Ellis Island clerks dropped the first “e” in their surname. Their eldest son Abram – Roger’s father – was only five.

The family settled with relatives who preceded them to Hudson, opening a grocery store at 749 Columbia Street, in what later would become Melino’s tavern. By 1923, the Miners had saved the $100 needed for Abram’s first-year tuition at New York Law School. Roger would follow in those footsteps, graduating cum laude and entering private practice with his father – “Miner & Miner” – in Hudson in 1959. “Only in America,” Frank and Fannie marveled. Small wonder their grandson beamed with pride every time he conducted a naturalization ceremony as a State Supreme Court justice.

Away from the bench, Miner’s wit and warm personality were legendary.He relished the role of toastmaster, mining a catalog of one-liners he compiled over the years. “He was extraordinarily humorous,” Roffer related. “He was famous in the court circuit for his after-dinner speaking, and every speech was funnier than the next. If he wasn’t such a good judge, I’d say he missed his calling.”

Hometown audiences enjoyed his Borscht Belt comedy, too. Presenting a “man of the year” award in 1987 to Columbia County Republican leader John Sharpe (1932-2014), Miner deadpanned, “The years have been kind to John. It’s the months in between that have knocked him to pieces. At his age, his back goes out more than he does. He has willed his body to science, but science is contesting the will.”

On a different court, Miner was an accomplished tennis player in his younger days, sporting full-length white pants rather than shorts. One frequent playing partner was Carl Whitbeck Jr., a veteran Hudson-based attorney and, for a time, Miner’s next-door neighbor. Whitbeck expressed amazement at Miner’s profound knowledge of the history of the federal, state, and local court systems.

Lance Wheeler, a lifelong Hudsonian widely known as a photographer and videographer, admired Roger Miner’s “brilliance, humor, and dedication. He was as hard-working a judge as I’ve ever seen, and a man of unquestioned integrity.” Wheeler had been a family friend since his father, Hudson Mayor Samuel T. Wheeler, chose Miner as his corporation counsel in 1961. Lance and his wife Gail later “toured with” Judge and Mrs. Miner to Capitol Hill to meet with Senators involved in his confirmation to the Second Circuit bench – and with President Reagan during a visit to New York City.

During his clerkship, Will Barclay doubled as Miner’s chauffeur, driving him daily from Hudson to chambers in Albany or New York City, a platform for enlightening conversations about the law, the judiciary, and life. “I learned more in that year than I probably learned in three years of law school,” said Barclay. “He was a great mentor to me. Once you clerked for Judge Miner, you joined the Roger and Jackie Miner family.”

The impact of Mrs. Miner

Jacqueline Mariani Miner (1936-2014) had been vice chair of Reagan’s 1980 New York presidential campaign, vice chair of the Republican State Committee, and was a scholar of American and world history. Her legacy was the passion with which she advocated for Roger to ascend to higher judgeships, tirelessly leveraging key contacts on the state and national levels.

In remarks upon being sworn in as Circuit Court judge in 1985, Judge Miner paid tribute to Jackie. “Although I am constrained to avert my eyes from such things,” he teased, “I am given to understand that her political talents are especially formidable. In any event, I can say no less of her than the man who appointed me to this position (Reagan) said of his wife: ‘She’s my everything.’”

A prolific writer, Judge Miner authored more than 600 published opinions and 30 law journal articles, many of them drafted by hand. His decisions, observed Roffer, “can be distilled to certain elemental concepts – concepts like fairness and equity, dignity and respect, and something as simple as right and wrong.”

Across Columbia County, remnants of heartbreak over the missed Supreme Court opportunity still linger four decades later. “Roger was disappointed,” said his brother Lance. “I was disappointed, I still am. I think he would’ve been great. He was really a legal scholar. Being on a pretty short list, that was quite an honor.”

With questions of ethics, transparency and politicization continuing to swirl around today’s Supreme Court – and with America’s confidence in her court system at an all-time low – Lance remarked with a chuckle: “Where’s Judge Miner when we need him?” •

Judge Miner donated his papers to New York Law School’s Mendik Library. The archival collection can be accessed at https://digitalcommons.nyls.edu/miner_papers/

Jim Calvin of Valatie, NY, is a former managing editor of the Hudson Register-Star and the principal of Calvin Communications.