I’ve used this webspace over the years to take some shots at Justice Clarence Thomas. Sure, some of them were probably below the belt (my personal favorite was when noting his dissent in the medical marijuana case of Gonzales v. Raich I referred to him as Justice “Long Bong Silver”), but that’s kind of how the internet works. We all get some testosterone and snark out of our systems and sometimes it gets heated, but for the most part it’s all in good fun. I don’t have anything personal against Justice Thomas; I just think he’s a bad jurist who is profoundly wrong about a great many things that I care very deeply about.

I think he’s wrong on his approach to personal privacy and abortion rights. I think he’s wrong on his blind acceptance to the excesses of executive power. I think he’s wrong on his laissez-faire attitude towards the Establishment Clause and most of the rest of the Bill of Rights. But most of all, I think he’s horribly and terribly wrong on his entire judicial philosophy. Thomas, like Justices Scalia, Alito and (sometimes) Roberts subscribe to the philosophy of Constitutional Originalism, or the belief that the Constitution should only be interpreted through the express intent of the document’s framers. In my mind, it’s a deeply hypocritical and myopic way to look at the law. Now, I’m sure they’d say the same thing about people like me, and that’s OK. Again, nothing personal, we just disagree.

Try telling that to Justice Thomas. It seems to him that the people who question him are more than just wrong; they’re out to get him. Some of you may be old enough to remember him referring to the “high tech lynching” he was being put through during his contentious Supreme Court confirmation. While there were many reasons why Senators at the time may have been cautious about confirming Thomas to the Court (chief among them his scant 15 month long record as a judge of any kind and his general lack of distinguishing accomplishment as a lawyer or scholar), the hearings largely revolved around the sordid tale of the “Anita Hill affair”. It was that controversy that caused Thomas to invoke lynching, and to this day it remains the thing for which he is probably most known.

His new memoir, My Grandfather’s Son (on sale now!) notes that his confirmation was the most difficult moment of his life. By all accounts, his memoir is a frank and emotionally-charged account of his ascent from poverty in Georgia to Yale Law School to Public Service and, eventually, to the highest court in the land. It’s also apparently a bit of a political hit-piece. As the New York Times notes, in their editorial review of the book, Thomas spares no metaphorical expense at re-hashing his confirmation hearing and one-upping his own hyperbolic "high tech lynching" line.

Now, I don’t know what really happened between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. Having read the testimony, I tend to believe her. That could be, as some bloggers fairly suggest, because I am a liberal and I’ve learned not to trust Thomas. Or it could be because one of my favorite professors from law school actually testified on Ms. Hill’s behalf at the hearings and he once regaled us with the long, sordid and extremely believable story. Regardless, it’s not really material. What is material is that the comparison Mr. Thomas makes between his experience in his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the experiences of every black person fearing for their lives from the KKK is more that a bit extreme.

But then again, Justice Thomas is never shy to wrap himself in the imagery of the wounded and oppressed on the one hand while discounting the wounds and oppression felt by everyone else on the other. For example, in his 60 Minutes interview last week promoting his book (on sale now!), he helped justify his opposition to affirmative action programs by claiming he was a victim of the programs themselves.

Newsflash to Justice Thomas: finishing in the middle of your class anywhere doesn’t make it easy to find a job in the legal profession. Trust me, I’m living proof. But that doesn’t mean your degree is worthless or “tainted” as you claim. Far, far from it. Frank Rich of the Times breaks down the 60 Minutes piece and the supposed uselessness of Thomas’ degree further:

Seems to be more than 15 cents worth to me.

More troubling to me is the bitter glee with which Thomas is dragging up old wounds, specifically when it comes to Anita Hill. In the 60 Minutes piece, he shrugged off Ms. Hill as “not the demure, religious, conservative person that they portrayed [at the hearings].” The shots he took at her in his book were more far-reaching. Ms. Hill herself recounted them in an Editorial response, also with the Times:

Ms. Hill proceeds to defend herself forcefully and if you’d like to hear her response I urge you to read the rest of the linked article above. This article, as I said before, is not about saying she was right and he was wrong. But it does raise the question to Justice Thomas: If this situation brought up so many old wounds, why open them up again unnecessarily? Why devote such a substantial portion to your memoirs (on sale now!) to firing back at long gone critics and rekindling long-dead wars?

I guess everyone deserves to tell their story and it’s hard to begrudge him for trying to do just that. Or rather, it would be if he weren’t so brazenly dismissive of those who would try to tell their stories of racism or poverty or homophobia or sexism or oppression or being shoved into the institutional margins. It would be more acceptable if he didn’t scoff at people who tried to explain to him why his actions hurt. It would be less ridiculous if he would look with self awareness at his own words from the 60 Minutes piece that practically beatified him.

It would be nice if you didn’t either, Justice Thomas.


Subrosa will admit, in all fairness, that has not yet read Justice Thomas' book (which, if you haven't heard, is on sale now!) It's on his list, just after he finishes "The Nine" by Jeffrey Toobin, which covers much of the same ground.