Imagine the legal world in the late 1960s, when Harriet Miers was among a handful of women who attended law school at Southern Methodist University.

Until 1963, a married woman could not sign a legally binding contract. She could not sell her own property without her husband's consent. Even a young woman with a supportive family was unlikely to consider law as a career. The only legal role model in popular culture was Perry Mason's skillful secretary, Della Street. The female lawyers of Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law and Law & Order were decades away.

Not surprisingly, the big Dallas law firms had no female attorneys. Ms. Miers was the first at Locke Purnell when she joined the firm in 1972.

Being a trailblazer is never easy. In these early years, some judges called the women in their courts "little lady." Some male lawyers joked that their female colleagues should wear pink suits. Most of the prestigious clubs at the tops of downtown bank buildings did not allow women in the main dining rooms – apparently there was concern about high-pitched voices – and so they were either left out of lunch meetings or forced as a group to eat in small private rooms.

How did a woman survive in that environment? She had to be exceptionally smart, pleasant and hard-working. To thrive, she had to perfect a certain type of behavior: supporting the men around her, working to ensure her colleagues' and clients' success, wielding influence but not power. Her appearance had to be pleasing, but being too pretty or stylish risked not being taken seriously. She voiced opinions with care, for fear of being labeled "strident." It was safer by far to let the men in power believe that her ideas were their own. When put into a leadership position, she would be praised not for boldly charting a course but for governing by consensus. More often, she worked in support positions behind the scenes.

Women, including Harriet Miers, walked this tightrope and made it easier for women like me who came along 10 years later.

This confining path to achievement has taken its toll on the women who followed it. Part of that toll comes in the smug reactions of people viewing these female pioneers through a contemporary lens, disregarding the way Ms. Miers' gender and early career years shaped the person she is today. Commentators on the right bemoan her lack of strongly stated opinions without appreciating that the lack of outspokenness was crucial to sustaining her success. Younger women look at her bangs and clothes and see the archetypal old maid or, as conservative columnist Peggy Noonan described her, "the Church Lady."

To those on the left, Ms. Miers looks distressingly like a doormat, and her professional pattern of furthering the needs of the men around her – most recently President Bush – is a bad sign indeed.

If she reaches the Supreme Court, Ms. Miers may find there's yet another toll of a lifetime of deference: She may have internalized her coping mechanism. Even with ironclad job security, she may be most comfortable playing the same role, clarifying the ideas of others, checking all the details, helping find common ground. If she follows her lifelong pattern, she will bond with and start deferring to the most appealing powerful male on the court. Pundits reading tea leaves should then concern themselves with which justice she would choose: Justice Antonin Scalia? Chief Justice John Roberts?

But if she becomes the next justice, something else may happen to Ms. Miers. After all, she will need no further boosts up the career ladder. She will have no client whose interests must be zealously represented. She will be armed with her considerable intelligence and work ethic.

She can finally, if she chooses, feel completely free to speak her mind. I have no idea whether I would agree with the positions she might take. I can only hope that those positions are informed by the years she spent as the only woman in the room.

Beth Thornburg is a professor at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law. She worked with Harriet Miers at the Dallas firm Locke Purnell from 1980 to 1984. Her e-mail address is ethornbu@smu.edu.