The allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court hopeful Brett Kavanaugh have roiled the country in much the same way that Anita Hill’s accusations against Clarence Thomas once did. Will the harsh glare of the #MeToo era spark a different outcome?
Clarence Thomas
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The Limits of Originalism
Two recent rulings by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spotlight the limitations of originalist readings of the Constitution, which would dominate a Court controlled by conservatives.
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Who Cares About Clarence Thomas’s Silence?
Criticisms of the Supreme Court justice should focus on merit, not trivia questions about when the last time he asked a question during oral arguments was.Â
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Yes, Justice Thomas, Affirmative Action Is Constitutional
The Supreme Court’s most ardent originalist gives us a weak argument against the policy.
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Conservative Victimology, Thomas Edition
Last week’s New Yorker had an article by Jeffrey Toobin about Clarence and Virginia Thomas, which discusses how Mrs. Thomas has developed a career as a conservative activist advocating on many of the issues that come before the court on which her husband sits: Still, the controversy over Ginni’s work has already taken a toll […]
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Thomas’ Ouija Board Originalism
I meant to write a post about how Justice Clarence Thomas‘ dissent from yesterday’s Supreme Court opinion striking down a ban on selling violent video games to children didn’t involve any actual case law, but Garrett Epps beat me to it, and probably did it better than I would have anyway: Thomas takes a different […]
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Who Cares About Clarence Thomas’ Silence at Oral Argument?
One of my idiosyncratic hobbyhorses is the argument that while there are many reasons to criticize Clarence Thomas, his famous silence at oral argument isn’t one of them. So I was happy to see Dahlia Lithwick at Slate express a similar view. As Orin Kerr also argues, how much a justice speaks at oral argument […]
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Balko On “The Clarence Thomas Rule.”
Radley Balko reacts to DougJ calling Juan Williams a “lawn jockey”: Which brings me to the Clarence Thomas Rule.* It goes something like this: When a black person expresses views that liberal elites have deemed unacceptable for black people to hold, it is permissible for good liberals to respond by implying that said black person […]
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Clarence Thomas’ Selective Disdain For Policy Arguments.
Yesterday saw the release of Sonia Sotomayor’s first opinion for the Court, as Adam Liptak notes. Traditionally, justices are assigned a straightforward, unanimous case for their first opinion, and this was mostly true. Clarence Thomas, however, refused to join the parts of Sotomayor’s opinion that considered the costs and benefits of a rule that would […]
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CLARENCE THOMAS DOESN’T THINK YOU SHOULD HAVE ALL THOSE RIGHTS.
In a time when a liberal President and a conservative President are in agreement that the government can detain anyone it wants indefinitely without trial or charges, and that it can break the law and then obscure its lawbreaking under the rubric of national security, I’m not inclined to say that there is a “proliferation […]