All true. Don’t forget he was nominated to replace Thurgood Marshall, the first and at that point only black ever to serve on the Supreme Court. It was simply laughable for GHWB to say Thomas’s color was not a factor, and that he was the best qualified person for the post. A good question to ask in these situations: but for the nominee’s color [or other extraneous political consideration], would he be a serious contender for the post? I don’t see how any reasonable, objective observer could say “yes” in Thomas’s case.
Thomas was qualified, barely, but there would have been many, many others who were much more so. It must be said that the pool of black conservatives who would pass muster with a Bush White House and with conservative senators was, and is, shallow.
I don’t know that that’s neccearily true. He’s said he doesn’t speak during oral arguments because he considers oral arguments not helpful in his making up his mind…he believes that the legal arguments are generally laid out more completely and coherantly in the legal briefs.
And if he writes the smallest number of opinions, it’s probably because he tends to be the most conservative of the justices, and his legal opinions don’t generally get consensus built around them.
Don’t dissents count as opinions? If your point holds, then the Justice with the 2nd smallest number of opinions should be the “most liberal” Justice. Is that the case (I honestly have no idea)?
Of course Thomas was appointed mainly because of his race.
Of course he was not the most qualified for the job.
Of course bad things can happen when Republicans play the token game, working from a shallow pool (I remember when J.C. Watts was hailed as the new face of the GOP – he was not terribly ready for prime time). Look at Harriet Miers, whose main qualification seems to have been GWB’s sentimental appreciation of her resemblance to Millie the White House pooch.
Of course I suspect that CT said roughly what he was alleged to have said to Anita Hill, and I conclude, BFD. Any delicate snowflake who can’t endure a couple of comments about a pubic hair and a porno movie probably isn’t much of a workplace asset anyhow.
Does any of that make him not marginally qualified? I don’t think so.
Quantity of opinions doesn’t mean much. Sometimes a lot of opinions just means liking the sound of your own voice. The clerks mostly write or tee them up anyhow, so I’d imagine Thomas could churn out quite a few, if he wanted to, even if he were stupid and lazy.
By the way, I found the encomium to RBG pretty funny. Her resume reveals more about political activism than about any real legal skill, and political activism on a one-issue basis at that. An agitator does not necessarily a jurist make.
Perhaps. But, his silence is so unusual, and so total, that it’s become a national joke. The Wall Street Journal started a “When-Will-Justice-Thomas-Ask-a-Question Watch” in their law blog. February 22, 2008 was the anniversary of Thomas’s last question, marking a record two years of silence, and I haven’t found any reports of him speaking during oral arguments since that date. It’s downright bizarre, and it gives the impression that he’s doing little more than “taking up space”.
Incidentally, Thomas wasn’t confirmed by a two-thirds vote. The Senate vote was 52-48, the narrowest margin in over a century.
And someone who can’t resist sexually harassing at least three employees is? It wasn’t just a pubic hair, it wasn’t just Anita Hill. What an embarrassment.
Given that they were working at the EEOC, which is pretty much a do-nothing, unnecessary agency, I suspect the caliber of the talent attracted there was fairly marginal across the board and that the highest standards of professionalism were hardly the norm.
He might well have been the best qualified black far-right Republican who graduated from a decent law school. At least he didn’t get his degree from Liberty, give him that.
Except Breyer and Ginsburg end up on the same side of decisions more often than Scalia and Thomas.
I think his legal philosophy is generally wrong. But he is a very smart man, and he is one of the few on the Court to get commercial speech right, IMHO.
Someone who has actually studied the papers of Harry Blackmun and other Supreme Court papers has concluded that this common misperception of Thomas is completely false:
Face it, most are fairly mediocre. None of them are/were especially intelligent (with the exception of Oliver W. Holmes, and Louis Brandeis), and the way the court operates is not conducive to great legal decisions. The fact is the SJC likes to duck really important decisions, like “was the Vietnam war legally started”, or, do states have the power to tax incomes twice, or: do local probate judges violate the Constitution (when they give exclusive rights of property to divorced women).
I don’t think Clarence Thomas is especially distinguished, but he is probably as good as most of them.
Really? Much as I hate his philosophy, Fat Tony is a remarkably intelligent man. From people who have worked with him, I hear the same about Roberts. Ginsburg too is by any standard a very intelligent woman.
