A new political battleground has been set now that the bid to fill a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court is open again, said Frank Ravitch, a constitutional law expert at MSU.

Harriet Miers — President Bush's nominee to fill the seat vacated by Sandra Day O'Connor on the nation's highest court — declined the president's recommendation Thursday. She serves as counsel to the White House and works closely with the president.

"Now it's wide open again," Ravitch said. "She did withdraw after pressure from the most socially conservative.

"It really does throw things right into a state of confusion again because we don't know who the president is going to nominate."

Nate Bailey, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said the group respects Miers' decision and is anxious to see who the president will nominate next.

"It's obvious that she went through great deliberation and made a decision that was best for herself, the president and the country," he said.

The Michigan Democratic Party had no comment, spokesman Jason Moon said.

The one problem Miers' nomination presented was the fact she had very few things in her background that could indicate what type of justice she could have been, Ravitch said.

"Miers doesn't have a judicial track record," he said. "Most other people had records, be it academic writings."

The fact Miers stepped down shows how much pull the radical right has within the Republican Party, said Stephen Purchase, president of the MSU College Democrats.

"We just have to hope the president looks for someone in the mainstream — someone who can garner widespread support in the Senate on both sides of aisle."

Purchase said the MSU College Democrats haven't discussed Miers' decision to reject her nomination, but he is hopeful someone who can follow in the vein of O'Connor is nominated.

It's not unusual for a nominee to reject a bid for the court, Ravitch said, adding that it's also not frequent.

"It doesn't happen with every nomination," he said. "It doesn't happen frequently, but it does happen."

Because socially conservative Republicans put pressure on Miers, Ravitch said the president could nominate someone who meets their standards.

"The president might give in and nominate what the Ann Coulters and the James Dobsons of the world want," he said. "The kind of person the social conservatives are calling for is an activist social conservative. The Democrats are most likely to filibuster someone like that."

Kris Turner can be reached at turne112@msu.edu.