WASHINGTON — As a prominent corporate lawyer in conservative Dallas for 28 years, Harriet Miers was a pioneer for women lawyers. But unlike most recent Supreme Court nominees, she has never had to face the touchstone social issues that come before the court.

Miers, if confirmed, will be the first justice in 34 years who has never been a judge, though some, such as Clarence Thomas, served only a year's apprenticeship in that role.

Legal scholars point out that some of the most influential justices in history, from William Rehnquist, a Justice Department attorney elevated by President Nixon in 1971, to Louis Brandeis, a private lawyer nominated by Woodrow Wilson in 1916, have not been judges.

It is only in the past 30 years that nominating judges has been the norm, in part because their judicial opinions are often seen as a good indication of their future rulings.

The White House is a little touchy about Miers' lack of experience on the bench.

President Bush mentioned it in his remarks yesterday, and a White House memo addressed the issue.

According to the White House, 10 of the 34 Justices appointed since 1933 came from within the president's administration, not from the judicial branch.

Among the other justices for whom the high court was their first judgeship were: Lewis Powell, Arthur Goldberg, Earl Warren, Tom Clark, Hugo Black, William Douglas and Felix Frankfurter.

But Miers is unusual even among justices with no judicial experience, because as a strictly corporate lawyer in Dallas representing clients such as Microsoft and Disney, she has specialized in commercial law.

"In terms of what does she think about issues like religious liberty, free speech and the right to privacy, she has thought about it possibly about as much as any educated man or woman on the street," said Douglas Laycock, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Texas.

Laycock said Miers will stand in contrast to Chief Justice John Roberts, whose career was based on Supreme Court advocacy.

"It will be surprising if she handles her confirmation hearings as well as Roberts did, because she just doesn't know anything. She can only cram so much," Laycock said.

Laycock and Alexandra Albright, associate dean of the University of Texas law school, likened Miers' background to that of Sandra Day O'Connor, whose seat she may fill.

O'Connor was a trial judge in Arizona for several years and briefly served as an appellate judge, but her pragmatic judicial philosophy has been grounded in her experiences in public life as a state legislator.

Miers would be the only justice who doesn't hold a degree from an elite, highly ranked university.

She has undergraduate and law degrees from Southern Methodist University, while seven of the eight other justices have at least one degree from Harvard or Yale. John Paul Stevens attended the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

Those distinctions could give Miers a very different — some say welcome — outlook.

"On the one hand, I think it's important to find out how well she might be able to handle the substance of constitutional law, and her depth of understanding of the law in general," said Temple University law professor Mark Rahdert, a former clerk for Justice Harry Blackmun. "That kind of inquiry takes on a greater and more important dimension when you have someone who hasn't sat on the bench for a long time."

But Rahdert added that the court often is enriched by justices who bring different life experiences to the bench.

"People can bring many different talents to the court," he said. "And she has some potentially great ones on her résumé. I don't think the court should be limited to people with extensive judicial experience. There's a value to getting people from outside the Beltway and from very good law schools that don't happen to be Harvard or Yale."

Though Miers' nomination is atypical of recent high-court picks, it harkens back to a time when presidents regularly chose high-court nominees from a much broader tableau of candidates.

Richard Stengel, the president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, said one of the upsides of justices with little or no judicial experience is that their approach tends to be understandable for ordinary people.

"They tend to look more at the ideal of what the law represents, and figure out how to get there, instead of looking strictly at what the law says and sticking to it," he said.

"In a weird way, I think people are more sympathetic to that approach. They want someone making decisions for them who isn't just sitting around parsing the law."

Bush's close relationship with Miers also harkens back to several other high-court picks, some that worked out well and others that were disastrous.

President Franklin Roosevelt regularly chose close associates to sit on the court, but none turned out to be an embarrassment. President Kennedy chose Byron White, a friend so close he used to participate in Kennedy family football games.

But three picks by President Truman rank among court watchers' worst, at least in the 20th century. Sherman Minton, Harold Burton and Chief Justice Fred Vinson all were close associates of Truman, but none left a favorable mark on the high court.

The 19th century is replete with political cronies who had undistinguished careers serving on the court.

"The truth is that if you compare Miers, just on paper, to some of the political cronies who have wound up on the court, her qualifications put her square in the middle," said court historian David Garrow. "Thirty or 35 years ago, no one would have thought there was anything out of the ordinary about it."

But Garrow said Miers' nomination, coming on the heels of John Roberts' confirmation, makes her seem less impressive.

"She's following a 24-karat all star onto the court," Garrow said, referring to Roberts' stellar credentials. "By comparison, she looks inescapably unqualified."

Compiled from Newsday, Knight Ridder Newspapers and The Associated Press