The windfall came after a judge who got thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Miers' law firm appointed a close professional associate of Miers and a partisan property-rights activist to a three-person panel that determined how much the state should pay.

The resulting six-figure payout to the Miers family in 2000 was made over state objections to the ''excessive'' amount and the process used to set the price. The panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for land that was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot.

Although mediation efforts in 2003 reduced the award from $106,915 to about $80,000, Miers, who acted as her family's representative in the case, has yet to reimburse the state for the $26,000 difference.

The case raises new questions about Miers' judgment at a time when her nomination is troubled by doubts about her qualifications and accusations that she was chosen mostly because of her close friendship with President Bush.

While nothing indicates that Miers sought out the judge or engineered the appointments to the panel, there's also no indication that she reported the potential conflicts of interest in the case or tried to avoid them.

Supreme Court justices, unlike other government officials, define potential conflicts of interest for themselves and police their own ethics.

''If Harriet Miers is confirmed, she'll be entrusted to make a large number of unreviewable decisions about which cases to sit on,'' said Doug Kendall, executive director of the Community Rights Counsel, a public-interest law firm in Washington. Kendall said the fact that Miers raised no red flags in the face of ''clearly disturbing facts'' in the land condemnation case doesn't say much for her ethical acumen.

Through a White House representative, Miers said she considers the case a straightforward condemnation matter.

Even though Miers was president of her law firm, the representative said, she didn't know specifics about the firm's campaign contributions to the judge, which were handled through its political action committee.

She also said that the money her family must repay the state is being held in an account in her mother's name. The funds will be released when the settlement papers are finalized.

The land is owned by Miers' mother, Sally. But court documents granted Harriet Miers authority to represent her mother's interests in the case, and all paperwork was sent to Miers' law office.

The condemnation case in Dallas began in April 1999, after the Miers family rejected the state's initial offer of $5,900 for a half-acre piece of their land and a subsequent offer for $27,000.

The land, at the corner of North Westmoreland Road and I-30 in west Dallas, was one of several parcels that Miers' father purchased in the area after World War II. The market value for the entire 18.74-acre lot, according to state tax records, was $244,890. It is vacant and brush-covered.

The state wanted to build an off-ramp from I-30 onto Westmoreland Road and needed the northeast corner of the Miers' lot to do it.

Texas law says that in condemnation cases, a judge must appoint three disinterested special commissioners to hear evidence, determine the injury or benefit of the state's action to the property owner, and rule on what, if anything, the state should pay for the property.

But there was an accumulation of shared interests - dating back years - among several of the parties that assembled in state District Judge David Evans' courtroom to settle the Miers' case.

Campaign finance reports in Dallas show that Miers' law firm, Locke Purnell Rain & Harrell, had contributed at least $5,000 to Evans' political campaigns between 1993 and 2001. That included a $3,000 contribution in 1998, the year before the Miers' condemnation case appeared in Evans' court.

Evans declined repeated requests for an interview. ''He has too many things he has to do. . . . He just wouldn't have time right now,'' said his court coordinator, John Warren.

One of the three commissioners whom Evans appointed to hear the case was Peggy Lundy, a professional friend and political ally of Miers.

Lundy is listed among Miers' personal friends by a conservative interest group, Progress for America, which is working to support her nomination to the high court.

In an interview Thursday, Lundy said she and Miers worked closely together on a commission set up to restructure Dallas' municipal court system.

Lundy said the work on the judicial commission inspired her to become active in judicial campaigns in the 1990s, work that led her to call on Miers for advice about candidates.

Evans also appointed one of his campaign contributors, Cathie Adams, to work on Miers' case. She was then president of the Dallas Eagle Forum, a politically active conservative organization that touts its ''pro-family movement.''