Clarence Thomas: The Keeper of the Flame
From a new article by Hank Holzer, “Clarence Thomas: The Keeper of the Flame,” that we just published at the Atlasphere:
In his fourteen complete terms as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas has written 327 opinions.
Despite their consistency in showing him to be a formidable intellect and staunch defender of the Constitution, his reputation among laypersons is not commensurate with his achievements.
Too many members of the public have uncritically accepted the professional character assassination visited upon Justice Thomas by the liberal professional and academic legal community.
I cannot count the times that people who should have known better have, simply upon hearing Clarence Thomas’s name, immediately responded with derogatory comments about his abilities as a justice — even though they have never read a single opinion of the hundreds Thomas has written.
In the summer of 2005, when Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced her retirement, liberals launched a preemptive attack against Thomas because of rumors about the possibility of his being appointed chief justice.
Not only did the Thomas-haters disinter their ugly rhetoric from the early nineties, they also impugned his fourteen-term record on the Court. Their unwarranted criticism covered all areas of Supreme Court adjudication: federalism, separation of powers, judicial review — and worse, Justice Thomas’s record in Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment cases.
Attacks on Justice Thomas have been unconscionable distortions of an unambiguous and distinguished record. Simple justice requires they be rebutted because his opinions, often eloquent, reveal him as a thoughtful conservative who understands the role of a Supreme Court justice, the methodology of proper constitutional and statutory adjudication, and the appropriate resolution of the many issues that have come to the Court during his tenure.
That is why I have written this book, the first to examine Clarence Thomas’s entire body of Supreme Court opinions — majority, concurring, and dissenting.
Holzer’s right, about the distortion of Thomas’s judicial record.
Keep reading...
Or, better still, buy his book The Keeper of the Flame: The Supreme Court Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas (from which this article is excerpted).
Also of interest re Thomas is Mark Tushnet’s Nov05 book, “A Court Divided.” Here’s a snippet from the Wash. Post (by Dahlia Lithwick, frequent Slate contributor) write-up, posted at Amazon.com:
“Tushnet is pitiless when it comes to condemning Scalia’s abrasive, often abusive personal attacks, which he dismisses as ‘the sound bite style of Crossfire’ and as less than intellectually persuasive to boot. But lest you suspect that he’s advancing a canned liberal agenda, it’s worth noting that Tushnet’s most generous portrait by far is of Clarence Thomas — a man whose legal work he characterizes as ‘more interesting and distinctive than what Scalia has done’ and with ‘a greater chance of making an enduring contribution to constitutional law.’”
Tushnet has spun 180 degrees on Thomas, with respect to his ability and the Anita Hill thing, becoming a liberal fan of Thomas’s rulings (even when not agreeing with them).