~ “I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts.” Ronald Reagan.
Tag Archives: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
If like myself, you feel the need to separate yourself from the noise for a bit, how about checking out a conversation between Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Brittney Lane Kubisch, a Pepperdine Law alumna who once clerked for Thomas and James A. Gash, President-elect of Pepperdine University.
Justice Thomas was the this year’s featured speaker earlier this month at Pepperdine’s 46th Annual School of Law Dinner (2019).
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court of the United States; his former clerk, Pepperdine Law alumna Brittney Lane Kubisch; and Pepperdine University President-elect James A. Gash join in conversation to share their unique career experiences and offer their extraordinary insight into how Pepperdine graduates can continue to thrive as advocates and peacemakers who will advance the rights and liberties of people around the world.
When the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1991, he was still new to the flowing black robes that cloak federal magistrates.
A rookie justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Thomas had served as a judge only since March 1990. Still raw from a bruising, 107-day confirmation process that wrapped up at the end of October 1991, Thomas had only a few weeks to prepare to hear cases that November.
“The easiest thing in the world under the circumstances would just be to go along to get along. He didn’t,” remembers Gregory Katsas, now a partner at Jones Day law firm and one of Thomas’ original cadre of clerks.
Instead, in an early episode that would become a trademark over the course of his career, the newest member of the court split with the other eight justices to write three solo dissents on complex and controversial cases.
When the Senate confirmed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1991, he was still new to the flowing black robes that cloak federal magistrates.
A rookie justice on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Thomas had served as a judge only since March 1990. Still raw from a bruising, 107-day confirmation process that wrapped up at the end of October 1991, Thomas had only a few weeks to prepare to hear cases that November.
“The easiest thing in the world under the circumstances would just be to go along to get along. He didn’t,” remembers Gregory Katsas, now a partner at Jones Day law firm and one of Thomas’ original cadre of clerks.
Instead, in an early episode that would become a trademark over the course of his career, the newest member of the court split with the other eight justices to write three solo dissents on complex and controversial cases.
Twenty-five years ago today—on July 1, 1991—President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas to the high court. His subsequent independence and consistent judicial philosophy have endeared him to conservatives, earned the grudging respect of liberals, and helped transform the court.
Recent reports that Thomas planned to retire after a quarter-century on the court rocked the legal world. President Barack Obama already has nominated appellate judge Merrick Garland to take the seat vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. If Thomas retired, the ideological balance of the bench would tip and the court could shift course permanently.
But those close to the 68-year-old jurist dismiss the retirement rumors as groundless.
“I feel like we’re at halftime at a football game,” says John Yoo, a Berkeley Law professor and former Thomas clerk. “We can look back at how his performance has been in the first half, but we really care about the second half and if his team is going to win.”
And by all accounts, Thomas has had a productive first half.
His career has been marked by a consistent drive to advance the judicial philosophy of originalism, a principle that requires interpreting the text of the Constitution within the bounds of how it would have been understood 229 years ago.
That philosophy often places Thomas in the minority and has prompted some of his most provocative written dissents on issues such as abortion, guns, and voting rights.
For conservatives, his jurisprudence is a refreshing cause célèbre.
“He looks to how the Constitution was understood at the time of the ratification. He goes to first principles,” John Eastman, a Chapman University law professor and former Thomas clerk told the Los Angeles Times. “He is willing to challenge precedents that deviate from the original understanding.”
Liberal constitutional scholars see a dangerous threat to progress in his judicial philosophy.
“In 25 years on the court, Justice Thomas has shown himself to be very conservative and more willing to radically change the law than his colleagues,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine Law School[…]
When the late Justice Antonin Scalia issued a bold majority opinion, or a scathing dissent, that was all the buzz – that it was bold, or scathing, or something having to do with the intensity of it all. Nobody could give a fig about the substance of it, the constitutional logic behind it, what it meant for the maintenance of the Republic.Those pundits and pols who agreed with Scalia gave a big “Huzzah” and those opposed portrayed him as a curmudgeon.
Well Scalia is gone so it was a stroke of luck for the tabloidists today as Justice Clarence Thomas gave them “the lede”.He asked a question.Clarence Thomas rarely ever, almost never, does that in open court. So, yes, just that occurrence alone rated a remarking. But the issue itself, what he asked about? Will it generate any buzz?
The case in question involves the suspension of Constitutional rights – when it may legally occur and what the duration of said suspension may be. If we non-lawyers, non-scholars out here have not been paying rapt attention to the slow erosion of Constitutional rights in this country, have not kept up with the rapid expansion of the Federal Register and the volumes and volumes of US Code, not to mention what goes on not only in the 50 states but the thousands of municipalities across the country, we probably did not realize that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms may be withheld upon something as minor as a misdemeanor.
But Thomas peppered Eisenstein with several questions about Second Amendment gun rights, a topic no other justice had asked about. He noted that the law allows someone convicted of a misdemeanor assault charge to get a lifetime ban on possessing a gun “which at least as of now results in suspension of a constitutional right.”
“The suspension is not directly related to the use of a weapon?” Thomas asked.
Did that strike a nerve somewhere? Anywhere? Not only is the suspension of a constitutional right liable to take place for something as trivial as a misdemeanor, it can be imposed when the exercise of the right had absolutely nothing to do with the original offense.
A guy got mad and slapped his wife. Not a gentlemanly thing to do, say all us decent folk, but for that he is henceforth unable to protect his home, his hearth, his family (if she forgave the cad), or even his self from even a felonius assault?
Yes, indeedy, replied the flummoxed attorney, still shell-shocked by the verbal outburst from the perpetually reticent jurist. In fact, the Second Amendment is not the only Right in the Bill Of Them liable to be voided if the pop culture demands it….
Hillary Clinton’s recently released emails includes a memo sent by David Brock titled, “Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas.”
The purpose of the document might suggest Clinton, or at least those closest to her and in her circle, are interested in impeaching Justice Thomas.
The document contains information from Brock about his book, The Real Anita Hill, and other similar points on Justice Thomas’s personal life.
The document contains details of Brock himself potentially intimidating women close to Justice Thomas. These details were from a 2001 New York Times article, in which the author reached out to a colleague of Thomas, Kaye Savage…’
What are the odds that if elected, Hillary Clinton will going after Clarence Thomas?????
Impeaching Thomas would mean one less Conservative judge in the Supreme Court. Say that they are clearing Hill’s name in the name of justice and besides, it is for the greater good. Greater good being tilting the balance of power that is already questionable in the Supreme Court even further left for decades to come.
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