Clarence Thomas

Source

• Born: 23 June 1948
• Birthplace: Pin Point, Georgia
• Best Known As: African-American Supreme Court Justice

Clarence Thomas is the conservative African American United States Supreme Court justice who was thrust into the limelight in his 1991 confirmation proceedings, during which he was accused of sexual harassment. Thomas grew up in rural Georgia, attended Conception Seminary and Holy Cross College, then graduated from Yale Law School in 1974. He practiced law for a short time in Missouri, then was an assistant to the attorney general and a corporate attorney before becoming an aide to Senator John Danforth (1979-81). Thomas caught the eye of the administration of President Ronald Reagan and ended up as the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from 1982 until he was appointed in 1990 by President George Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 1991 he was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bush, to fill the seat left by retiring justice Thurgood Marshall.

Despite partisan debate over Thomas's politics and lack of experience, he appeared to be headed for confirmation when the story broke that a former colleague, Anita Hill, accused him of lewd and inappropriate behavior while at the EEOC. The Senate Judiciary Committee reopened Thomas's confirmation hearing and televised the proceedings. Hill, a law professor in Oklahoma, gave testimony that stunned viewers with its adults-only content, and Thomas flatly denied her allegations. Both sides, Democrats supporting Hill and Republicans supporting Thomas, accused the other of dirty politics. In spite of Thomas's famous declaration that the hearing amounted to "a high-tech lynching of uppity blacks," what came out of the hearings was a national debate not on race, but on gender -- specifically the issue of sexual harrassment. In the end, Thomas was confirmed by the Senate, 52-48, and became the second African American to sit on the Supreme Court. Since then he has kept a low profile on the court and has earned a reputation as one of the more conservative justices.

According to his Supreme Court biography, Thomas "married Virginia Lamp in 1987 and has one child, Jamal Adeen, by a previous marriage"... Thomas presided at the 1994 marriage of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and his third wife, Marta; the marriage took place at Thomas's home in Virginia.

For more information on Clarence Thomas, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Pin Point, Georgia, 23 June 1948), associate justice, 1991–. Although he remains one of the most junior members of the U.S. Supreme Court (third last in seniority), Clarence Thomas is the most widely recognized justice on the Court and has received more attention in the popular media than virtually any other justice in American history. It is not hard to understand why. After one of the most caustic and sensational confirmation hearings in which he was accused at the eleventh hour by a former colleague in the Reagan administration of sexual harassment, Thomas emerged as the most outspoken critic of modern liberal jurisprudence ever to sit on the Court. Confirming the fears of his Democratic opponents and delighting his Republican allies, Thomas has been referred to by his supporters as the leading conservative in America. His opinions have ranged from assailing the New Deal Court, which opened the door to the federal regulatory state, to results‐oriented civil rights policy, to the Court's abortion rights decisions, to defendant‐friendly criminal law, and interpretations of the Second Amendment that have failed to recognize the right to bear arms as an individual right.

Descended from slaves of the Thomas and King plantations in Georgia, Thomas was raised by his maternal grandparents. His grandfather, Myers Anderson, was the most significant influence on his life, teaching the young Thomas the virtues of hard work, perseverance, and self‐reliance. Thomas graduated cum laude from Holy Cross and then from Yale Law School in 1974. President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education in 1981. In 1982 Reagan elevated Thomas to chair the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was in these two capacities in the Reagan administration that Thomas established his conservative credentials, criticizing affirmative action and statistic‐based quotas, a position that put him at odds with career civil rights employees. George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1989. After a brief tenure on the court of appeals, President Bush nominated Thomas on 1 July 1991 to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the Court. There was no little irony to Bush's appointment of Thomas as Marshall's replacement, as Thomas would be quick to criticize the civil rights orthodoxies and doctrines that were largely the legacy of Marshall's numerous opinions on the high bench. Thomas's jurisprudence involves a unique blend of natural law and natural rights philosophy with the doctrine of originalism, the theory of constitutional interpretation that seeks constitutional meaning in the intent of the framers of the Constitution.

In voting rights, affirmative action, and desegregation cases, Thomas has stressed repeatedly the importance of individual rights in the American constitutional order. His separate concurring opinion in Holder v. Hall (1994) was one of the longest concurring opinions in Supreme Court history and established Thomas as the Court's preeminent critic of group‐based civil rights policy. In Holder Thomas critically surveyed the Court's vote dilution jurisprudence under the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Vote dilution law had required jurisdictions to create “safe” minority electoral districts. The “ideal” that the Court eventually settled upon under the act became one of roughly proportional representation for legally recognized racial and ethnic groups, a policy Thomas denounced as both unprincipled and balkanizing. Thomas criticized the Court's vote dilution law for adopting an arbitrary theory of representation. The idea “that members of racial and ethnic groups must all think alike” (p. 903) had not only embroiled federal courts in “an enterprise of segregating the races into political homelands”—a practice that amounted “to nothing short of a system of ‘political apartheid’” (p. 905)—but was “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color‐blind Constitution” (pp. 905–906), a principle Thomas asserted for the first time in Holder and that has been adopted by only one other justice on the Court, Thomas's close ally Antonin Scalia. Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Harry A. Blackmun, David Souter, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, took the rare step of authoring a separate dissenting opinion directed solely at Thomas's interpretation of the VRA.

One year later, in Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena (1995), Thomas provoked Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Ginsburg, to write another broadside directed at Thomas's remarks regarding the pernicious assumptions of affirmative action. Adarand was a groundbreaking affirmative action case involving a constitutional challenge to minority business set‐asides for federal highway projects. Thomas agreed with the majority that strict scrutiny should apply to federal as well as state affirmative action programs, a decision overruling the Court's earlier opinion in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC (1990). In a concurring opinion, Thomas insisted that there was no “racial paternalism exception to the principle of equal protection” (p. 240). He then identified the paternalism of affirmative action with laws, such as Jim Crow, that sought to oppress blacks. As authority for the “principle of inherent equality” that he relied on in Adarand, Thomas cited the Declaration of Independence.

Thomas's focus on constitutional principle was also the basis for his critique of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court's famous school desegregation case. In Missouri v. Jenkins (1995), Thomas emphasized that the Court in Brown did not need to rely on social science evidence. Basing constitutional decisions on social science evidence was dangerous business since one could find social science to support almost any conclusion. In constitutional cases the Court should rely solely upon constitutional principle. In Jenkins, Thomas also criticized the federal courts for excessive use of their powers of equity under Article III to fashion remedies for past segregation.

In a series of rulings, Thomas has also embarked on a critique of the Court's federalism jurisprudence. In United States v. Lopez (1995), he focused on its Commerce Clause cases. Lopez involved an attempt by the federal government to regulate handgun possession in a Texas public school pursuant to the 1990 Gun‐Free School Zones Act. Joining the majority's opinion denying the federal government's authority to regulate such local activities, Thomas filed a separate concurring opinion in which he criticized the Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence dating back to the New Deal. The Court's interpretation, having “drifted far from the original understanding of the Commerce Clause” (p. 584), had allowed Congress to regulate anything that might have a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce. When “taken to its logical extreme” the substantial effects test allowed “Congress a ‘police power’ over all aspects of American life” (p. 584). This reading of the clause had rendered most of the remaining provisions of Article I, section 8 “superfluous” and came “close to turning the Tenth Amendment on its head.” In Printz v. United States (1997), Thomas reiterated these concerns, relying on Lopez to argue that the federal government's attempt under the Brady Act to regulate wholly intrastate gun sales violated the Commerce Clause as well as the Tenth Amendment. In dicta, Thomas suggested that the Second Amendment conferred a personal right to keep and bear arms and might present yet another bar to the Brady Act.

Thomas has also invited the Court to overturn its decisions applying the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishments prohibition to conduct in prisons. In Hudson v. McMillian (1992), Thomas proclaimed in dissent that “The Eighth Amendment is not, and should not be turned into, a National Code of Prison Regulation” (p. 28). Thomas's narrow, originalist construction of the Eighth Amendment has been evident in death penalty cases. Most recently, he joined Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), a case that exempted individuals with mild mental retardation from the death penalty. Scalia, Thomas, and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist voiced concern that symptoms of mental retardation could be easily feigned. In addition, the Court's reference to a “national consensus” regarding the unconstitutionality of executing those with mild mental retardation was not based on any national consensus so much as the predilections of an elite group of lawyers.

The indictment of elite opinion as the Court's guiding light in constitutional cases has been a constant theme in Justice Thomas's opinions. In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), for instance, where the Court accepted the “diversity” rationale for the University of Michigan law school's affirmative action program, Thomas described the majority's opinion as upholding “the Law School's racial discrimination not by interpreting the people's Constitution, but by responding to a faddish slogan of the cognoscenti.” In Zelman v. Simmons‐Harris (2002), where the Court approved the state of Ohio's school voucher program for the city of Cleveland, Thomas similarly condemned “the romanticized ideal of universal public education” which “resonates with the cognoscenti who oppose vouchers” (p. 682).

In other cases Thomas has implored the Court to protect commercial speech, to allow states to impose term limits on members of Congress (which the Court has prohibited), to lower the wall between church and state in religion clause cases, and to construe the Fifth Amendment's Takings Clause more generously to safeguard property owners. Thomas's opinions in these cases have crystallized issues that have defined the modern Court. Considered a likely Republican nominee to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist upon his retirement, Thomas, the Court's youngest member, stands to exercise significantly more influence on American law than he has to date.

See also Nominations, Controversial.

Bibliography

• Ken Foskett, Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas (2004).
• Scott D. Gerber, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas (1998).
• Andrew Peyton Thomas, Clarence Thomas: A Biography (2001)

— Anthony A. Peacock

President George Bush named Clarence Thomas (born 1948) to the Supreme Court in 1991. Senate confirmation was gained only after intense public controversy over charges of "sexual harassment" brought by Anita Hill, Thomas's former employee. Since joining the Court, Thomas has tended to vote with the more conservative justices.

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, a tiny, coastal hamlet town outside of Savannah, on June 23, 1948. For the first years of his life he lived in a one-room shack with dirt floors and no plumbing. When Thomas was two years old, his father walked out on the family, leaving Clarence's mother with two small children and another on the way. At the age of seven, Thomas and his younger brother were sent to live with their grandfather, Myers Anderson, and his wife, Christine, in Savannah. Anderson, a devout Catholic and active member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), sent Thomas to a Catholic school staffed by strict but supportive nuns.

In 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was enacted, Thomas' grandfather withdrew him from the all-black parochial high school he was attending and sent him to an all-white Catholic boarding school in Savannah, St. John Vianny Minor Seminary. Despite being confronted with racism, Thomas made excellent grades and played on the school's football team. Thomas' grandfather sent Clarence to Immaculate Conception Seminary in northwestern Missouri after his graduation from high school in 1967. Although Thomas was not the only African American student, he still was troubled by poor race relations. A racist remark made about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., made up Thomas' mind: he would not become a priest.

Struggles with Personal Identity

The decision bitterly disappointed his grandfather, but Clarence decided to enroll at Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Worcester, Massachusetts. Thomas was a devoted student who "was always in the library, " according to one friend. Yet the future justice found time to participate on the track team, work in the school cafeteria, and volunteer to help the poor in Worcester once a week. He also assisted in founding the Black Student Union at Holy Cross. Thomas seemed haunted by racial isolation and academic pressures and admitted later that he had seriously considered dropping out of college. However, fearful that he would be drafted for service in the Vietnam War, Thomas stayed at Holy Cross and was graduated in 1971 with honors.

Another reason that Thomas may have decided to stay in school was his introduction to Kathy Ambush, a coed at a nearby college. A few days after they met, Thomas told a friend that he was in love with Kathy. They were married in Worcester the day after Clarence's college commencement and had one son, Jamal, born in 1973.

Thanks to his sterling academic record, Thomas was admitted to the law schools at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania. He chose Yale because of the financial support it offered him as part of its affirmative-action policy to attract students from racial and ethnic minorities. At Yale, he continued to do well academically, receiving mostly passes on Yale's grading scale of honors, pass, low pass, and fail.

Thomas appeared to fit in socially as well as academically. Yet, years later, he described his "rage" and loneliness at feeling snubbed by whites who viewed him as an affirmative action token and ignored by African Americans with more elite backgrounds. In his third year of law school he interviewed with law firms but again felt that he was treated differently because of his race.

Joined Staff of Missouri Attorney General

Thomas graduated from Yale law school in 1974. Rather than take what he considered an insufficient salary from the firm where he'd done his summer work, Thomas accepted a position on the staff of Attorney General John Danforth, a Republican. With Danforth's election to the Senate in 1977, Thomas took a job as an attorney for the Monsanto Company in St. Louis. In 1979 Thomas moved to Washington, DC, and became a legislative assistant to Danforth on the condition that he not be assigned to civil rights issues. His resentment toward the tokenism of affirmative action, combined with his grandfather's lessons on self-sufficiency and independence, had moved Thomas into a circle of African American conservatives who rejected the dependency fostered among blacks by the welfare state.

Thomas' conservative ideas quickly brought him to the attention of the Reagan administration, which was always looking for qualified members of ethnic minorities. In 1981 Thomas was appointed assistant secretary for civil rights in the United States Department of Education. Thomas openly stated that minority groups must succeed by their own merit, and he asserted that affirmative action programs and civil rights legislation do not improve living standards.

Accepted Appointment With High Political Visibility

In 1982, Clarence Thomas became the chairman of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was designed to enforce anti-discrimination laws that cover race, sex, gender, and age discrimination in the workplace. Thomas served two consecutive terms as chairman, despite having previously sworn he would never work at EEOC. Over the eight years he served as chairman, Thomas shifted the focus of the commission from large class-action suits to individual cases of discrimination.

In 1990, President George Bush appointed Thomas to the Washington, DC, Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals, a common stepping stone to the Supreme Court. Thomas filled the seat left vacant by Robert Bork, an unsuccessful nominee to the Supreme Court. Thomas wrote only 20 opinions in the year he served on the court, none of which involved controversial constitutional issues. Despite this comparatively limited experience, Bush nominated Thomas to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall on July 1, 1991. In announcing his choice to replace Marshall, Bush implausibly argued that "the fact that he [Thomas] is black has nothing to do with the sense that he is the best qualified at this time."

Anita Hill Alleges Sexual Harassment

The Senate's confirmation hearing appeared to be moving along smoothly until Anita Hill's allegations were made public. On October 8, Hill - a professor at the University of Oklahoma Law School - held a press conference, in which she made public the main points of testimony she previously had given the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Vociferous protest by some feminist groups led the confirmation committee, headed by Delaware Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat, to publicly review Hill's charges.

In her testimony, Hill alleged that - while she worked at the EEOC nearly a decade earlier - Thomas badgered her for dates and told stories in her presence about pornographic film scenes and his own sexual prowess. Hill claimed that Thomas's actions made it difficult for here to do her job and even caused physical distress. Nevertheless, she continued to initiate contacts with Thomas even after he helped arrange for her appointment as a law professor.

The televised hearings, during which Hill, Thomas, and several witnesses on both sides testified about the allegations, were among the most widely-viewed political events in television history. Thomas denied any wrongdoing. His allies suggested that Hill was lying and was being cynically manipulated by liberals opposed to Thomas's views on abortion and affirmative action. Thomas himself remarked during the course of the televised hearings that the process had been a harrowing personal ordeal for him and his wife. Indeed, he claimed, he would have preferred "an assassin's bullet to this kind of living hell, " and he would have withdrawn himself from consideration earlier had he known what lay ahead. Suspending his lifelong criticism of racial politics, he characterized the televised hearings as a "hightech lynching."

Militant women's groups threatened to vote against Thomas's backers in the next elections. At the same time, many African Americans believed the Republican charges that Hill was part of a campaign to smear Thomas. In the end, Thomas was confirmed by a 52-48 margin, the smallest - according to Time - by which any justice has been confirmed in this century.

Hill's allegations helped to make sexual harassment a major political issue. The phrase itself had varying, even conflicting, definitions. Nevertheless, local, state, and national laws were passed to stop workplace practices considered demeaning to subordinates. Meanwhile, articles and books continued to debate the validity of Hill's specific charges against Thomas. There probably never will be a consensus judgement. Hill did not overtly protest at the time the alleged actions took place, and determining the truth years later was difficult.

Thomas had separated from his wife Kathy in 1981; the two divorced in 1984, and he retained custody of Jamal. The circumstances of the divorce remain a well-guarded secret, although allegations of abuse made at the time returned to haunt Thomas during his confirmation hearings. In 1986, Thomas met Virginia Lamp, a white fellow law school graduate active in conservative causes; and the two married in 1987. She was a Labor Department lawyer when Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court. Following the confirmation, she told her story to People, recounting the tension of the confirmation fight and speculating that Hill was in love with Thomas. She referred to the struggle to get Thomas confirmed as "Good versus Evil."

A Quiet But Effective Justice

After joining the Court, Thomas voted most frequently with Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, thereby aligning himself with the conservatives who wish to restrain the federal government's power. Thomas showed no signs of the "freshman syndrome" attributed to Justice David Souter, who was relatively inactive his first year as a justice. Instead, Thomas was relatively visible in his opinion-writing from the beginning. Reviewers of his opinions and legal essays agreed that they were clear, well-researched, and consistent.

African American political groups criticized Thomas for maintaining his conservative values on the Court. In July 1995, NAACP convention delegates decried Thomas's votes regarding school desegregation, race-based redistricting of voting precincts, and racial quotas and set-asides. An invitation to speak before an eighth-grade awards ceremony in Maryland in 1996 sparked weeks of protests and disputes among school board members. The invitation ultimately was rescinded as was a request to address a youth festival in January 1997. Following the latter incident, however, NAACP president Kweisi Mfume suggested that African American organizations should stop bashing Thomas. "I don't think we can ever change Clarence Thomas, " Mfume stated, "and I don't want to spend any more of my time or NAACP time trying."

For the first few years after his appointment, Thomas tended to keep a low public profile. Due to the antipathy of some African American and feminist groups, he had fewer of the ceremonial invitations normally extended to Supreme Court Justices. From 1996 on, however, Thomas began to make occasional appearances before conservative political groups. In these speeches, he continued to call on judges to restrain their efforts to remake society by judicial decree. And, without directly alluding to his personal experiences, he eloquently deplored the decline of civility in America's public discourse and conduct.

Further Reading

A short biography of Clarence Thomas appears in the Commission on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution's publication The Supreme Court of the United States: Its Beginning & Its Justices 1790-1991 (1992). A journalistic analysis of the Clarence Thomas/ Anita Hill controversy is Timothy Phelps and Helen Winternitz's Capitol Games (1992). An historical view is given by Illinois U.S. Senator Paul Simon in Advice & Consent: Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork and the Intriguing History of the Supreme Court's Nomination Battles (1992). A periodical with additional information is Jet (March 3, 1997).

Brock, David. The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story. (Free Press, 1993). Danforth, John. Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas. (Free Press, 1994). Myer, Jane. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas (Houghton Mifflin, 1994). Smith, Christopher. Critical Judicial Nominations & Political Change: The Impact of Clarence Thomas (Greenwood, 1993).

supreme court justice; appeals court judge; federal official

Personal Information

Born on June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, GA; son of M. C. and Leola (Anderson) Thomas; married Kathy Grace Ambush, 1971 (divorced, 1984); married Virginia Lamp, 1987; children: (first marriage) Jamal; (legal guardian of) Mark Martin Jr.
Education: Holy Cross College, Worcester, MA, 1971; Yale University Law School, JD, 1974.
Politics: Republican.
Religion: Born Baptist, raised Catholic.
Memberships: Black Student Union, Holy Cross College, founder, 1971; advisory board of the Lincoln Review.

Career

Held summer jobs in legal aid and at Hill, Jones & Farrington (law firm), c. 1971-74; offices of Missouri Attorney General John Danforth, staff member, 1974-77; Monsanto Corporation, St. Louis, MO, legal counsel, 1977-80; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, director, 1980-89; Federal Appeals Court, judge, 1990-91; Supreme Court Justice, 1991-.

Life's Work

Clarence Thomas was sworn in as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in November of 1991, following perhaps the greatest furor over such an appointment in modern history. A conservative jurist with experience in the education department under President Ronald Reagan, Thomas had also headed the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission and, while there, allegedly sexually harassed a staff member, Anita Hill. Hill's accusations surfaced only after Thomas's nomination to the nation's highest court by President George Bush; Hill was by this time a law professor. The Senate confirmation hearings that dealt with these charges had enormous political and social ramifications above and beyond Thomas's suitability for the Supreme Court. The judge's appointment was a watershed for the Bush administration, which needed to replace retiring black justice Thurgood Marshall. The choice of a black conservative effectively stymied Democratic opposition to Thomas, who suspended his lifelong criticism of racial politics long enough to call his confirmation hearings a "high-tech lynching." That remark is representative of the many contradictions embodied by this controversial figure. Indeed, Newsweek noted that "Thomas is an intense opponent of affirmative action, yet has benefited from it throughout his life.... the very reason he was named to succeed Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court is because of his race."

Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point, Georgia, a tiny coastal hamlet named for the plantation that once stood there. His mother, Leola, was 18 at the time of his birth; his father M. C. Thomas left the family two years later. Leola, her two children--Clarence and his older sister Emma Mae--and her Aunt Annie Graham occupied what Newsweek described as "a one-room wooden house near the marshes. It had dirt floors and no plumbing or electricity." Their destitute life was struck by further misfortune five years after M. C. walked out on the family, ostensibly headed for Philadelphia: the house burned down, so the family moved near Leola's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Myers Anderson. Having in the meantime married a man who didn't want to raise the children--there was now a third child, Myers, who went by the name Peanut--Leola agreed to let the Andersons care for the two boys and sent Emma Mae to live with Aunt Annie in Pin Point.

Raised By His Devout Catholic Grandfather

Myers Anderson exercised a huge influence on Clarence's life. A devout Catholic who created his own fuel oil business in Savannah in the 1950s, he provided the example of self-motivation in the face of segregation that would inspire his grandson. Through hard work and a refusal to submit to the poverty and degradation of menial work, he "did for himself," as one of his favorite expressions went. He fed and cared for Clarence and Peanut and paid for their education at St. Benedict the Moor; an all-black grammar school where white nuns exercised firm discipline. The racist vigilante group known as the Ku Klux Klan often threatened the nuns, who rode on the backs of buses with their students and demanded hard work and promptly completed assignments. Clarence's grandfather took him to a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), of which Anderson was a member, and read the boy's grades aloud. "The most compassionate thing [our grandparents] did for us was to teach us to fend for ourselves and to do that in an openly hostile environment," Thomas noted in a 1987 speech before the Heritage Foundation, published in Policy Review in 1991.

Clarence performed duties as altar boy and crossing guard at St. Benedict's, and though not remembered by his teachers as an outstanding student, he excelled at sports. After school he and his brother helped their grandfather on his delivery rounds. Clarence's favorite retreat was a blacks-only library in Savannah--the Savannah public library was for whites--funded by the Carnegie family. His browsing there helped to formulate his ambition: He would one day have the sophistication to understand magazines like the New Yorker.

He graduated from St. Benedict's in 1962, spent two years at St. Pius X High School, and then transferred--at his grandfather's insistence--to a white Catholic boarding school called St. John Vianney Minor Seminary. Clarence did well in school, but experienced for the first time the hostility of racism. His schoolmates' derisive remarks came as a shock--his segregated youth had ironically provided some insulation from everyday racism--but he kept his composure. Following St. John's, Clarence went to Immaculate Conception Seminary in Conception, Missouri, to study for the priesthood. As one of only four blacks there, Thomas was again made acutely aware of the double standards of white Christian society. One incident, however, caused him to give up on the seminary for good: the voice of a fellow seminarian cheering the news that black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot in 1968. "I knew I couldn't stay in this so-called Christian environment," he remarked later.

Struggles With Race and Identity Intensified

In 1968 Thomas began his studies at Holy Cross, a Jesuit college in Worcester, Massachusetts. This period saw an intensification of Thomas's struggle with his identity, his background, and the politics of race. He joined the Black Student Union, a militant group on campus that succeeded in using its political and rhetorical energies to make some changes, including an all-black dormitory, more courses relevant to black students, and increased financial aid. The atmosphere of questioning and empowerment was exhilarating for Thomas, though unlike many of his contemporaries he never abandoned his earliest sources of strength: "Thomas still spoke the conservative maxims of his grandfather and the nuns far more often than the chic of the left," reported Newsweek. Though he adopted some of the language, style, and arguments of the radical Black Panther Party's leaders, he remained a skeptic and was often the sole dissenter among his revolutionary circle. This tendency would serve him well as he learned what he would later call "the loneliness of the black conservative."

During his sophomore year Thomas met Kathy Grace Ambush and began a relationship that would lead to their 1971 marriage. In 1973 their son, Jamal, was born. Thomas had registered for the draft in 1966, at age 18, but had a student deferment; when he graduated in 1971, and his number in the conscription lottery was low, he seemed a likely candidate for military service in Vietnam. However, he failed his physical examination. He had applied to Yale, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania law schools--all of which had accepted him--and decided on Yale because of the financial support it offered him. Thomas was a beneficiary of Yale's new affirmative-action policy, which offered opportunities to minority students. Though he benefited from this policy, it raised in Thomas--perhaps for the first time--doubts about whether he had succeeded on his own merits. These doubts would trouble him throughout his career and would motivate a deep distrust of what conservatives like to call "entitlements" or "handouts."

Thus he strained to demonstrate his qualifications, to prove that something other than his blackness had brought him into the Ivy League. While at Yale he held some summer jobs; he assisted a small legal-aid establishment, which brought him into contact with welfare cases, and spent a summer at the law firm of Hill, Jones, & Farrington. In the latter job Thomas could exercise his skill at developing both sides of an argument. As a law student, Thomas dedicated himself to areas of legal study less often associated with blacks--tax and corporate law--rather than civil rights. His eagerness to dissociate himself from the stereotypes that surrounded beneficiaries of affirmative action was a strong determining factor here. Yet when he began to look for work as his graduation drew near, he found few law firms interested him. The pay they offered was demonstrably lower than what white graduates would have been offered, and they tended to assume Thomas wanted to do social rather than corporate law. Once again, he found himself pigeonholed by race.

Joined Staff of Missouri Attorney General

Rather than accept what he considered an insufficient salary from the firm where he'd done his summer work, Thomas accepted a position on the staff of John Danforth, attorney general of Missouri. Danforth had attended Yale himself and, as an Episcopal minister and Republican, he saw in Thomas a promising young conservative. Thomas worked hard under Danforth, and specialized in tax law. He achieved a victory when he appealed a decision against the state regarding the governor's banning of personalized license plates, and won in a higher court. Danforth's office had thought the case unwinnable since a lot of wealthy people had these so-called vanity plates; Thomas felt it necessary to prove that the privileged few couldn't control the law.

Yet Thomas himself sought status symbols; he bought a BMW automobile while working in Danforth's office, though he told fellow workers that a Mercedes-Benz was the car for a "gentleman" to drive. This affection for status symbols no doubt grew out of Thomas's fondness for the ideology of self-help. He took a large step in the direction of greater financial stability when Danforth left Missouri to take a Senate seat; Thomas landed a job as legal counsel for the Monsanto Corporation. There, as Time phrased it, he "shepherded pesticides through government registration."

Monsanto's chemical empire supported him comfortably until he decided to move on to Washington. He returned to Danforth's staff and worked on energy and environmental issues, but was at the same time struck by the work of a handful of black conservatives. The writings of right-wing black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, as well as the black conservative journal, the Lincoln Review, had a galvanizing effect on Thomas. He joined the advisory board of the Review, which has created waves in the black community by taking some very unpopular--some would say reactionary--stands. The journal's editor, Jay Parker, argued on behalf of the government of South Africa, while the journal itself opposed a holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr.; questioned the extent, if not the existence, of racial discrimination; and referred to abortion as a plot to "slaughter" blacks. Parker and Thomas chatted on the phone in 1980; the controversial editor would soon be looking for interested black conservatives to join the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

Accepted Posts With High Political Visibility

Thomas's first offer from Reagan's people was a position as a policy staffer on energy and environmental issues, but he turned this job down, accepting--in spite of his previous aversion to such matters--a place at the head of civil rights under the secretary of education. Ten months later he was put in charge of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), an agency charged with enforcing civil rights laws. Why Thomas accepted these jobs remains unclear, since they are the sort of classically "black" appointments he had resolutely avoided in the past. Some observers have speculated that Thomas merely took the positions with the highest political visibility, while others suggested that his recent infatuation with ultraconservative black thinkers like Sowell and Parker had awakened in him a new political enthusiasm, and that he wished to tackle affirmative action and other issues head on.

In any case, Thomas's years at EEOC were fraught with conflict. He was a demanding supervisor, and often dealt with employees harshly. He allegedly settled petty scores in harsh ways, argued inconsistently on issues like hiring quotas for minorities--he both opposed and supported them over the course of his tenure--and reportedly avoided prosecuting thousands of age discrimination cases. Although less doctrinaire than "the other Clarence"--Reagan's fiery Civil Rights Commission chair Clarence Pendleton, another conservative black who alienated much of the civil rights community--Thomas made his self-help philosophy well known. He remarked to Lena Williams in a New York Times profile that "race-conscious remedies in this society are dangerous. You can't orchestrate society along racial lines or different lines by saying there should be 10 percent blacks, 15 percent Hispanics." He also made waves by remarking in 1984 that civil rights leaders just "bitch, bitch, bitch, moan and whine."

Despite the discontent he evoked from civil rights activists, Thomas was granted a second term at EEOC in 1984. He did not stand uniformly behind the administration's decisions, however. His was a dissenting voice--though reportedly not a very loud one--when the Justice Department argued that religious institutions like Bob Jones University, which practices various kinds of discrimination, should remain tax-exempt. "A fellow member of the administration said rather glibly that, in two days, the furor over Bob Jones would end," Thomas remarked in a 1987 speech. "I responded that we had sounded our death knell with that decision. Unfortunately, I was more right than he was."

Divorced and Remarried

It was a difficult period for Thomas, who had separated from Kathy in 1981; the two divorced in 1984, and Clarence retained custody of Jamal. The circumstances of the marriage and the divorce remain a well-guarded secret, and allegations of abuse made at the time returned to haunt Thomas during his confirmation hearings years later. Thomas became a stern taskmaster at home, pressuring Jamal to succeed at school just as Myers Anderson had pressed him in his own youth. In 1986 he met Virginia Lamp, a white fellow law school graduate active in conservative causes. The two fell in love and married in 1987. Virginia was a Labor Department lawyer when Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court.

Thomas's private regimen is as interesting a mix as his frequently contradictory public statements. He began lifting weights while at college and continues his bodybuilding to this day, yet he also smokes cigars--not, some would say, the best habit for someone in weight training. Earning $71,000 a year under Reagan, Thomas was chauffeured around in a limousine which, according to Time, stopped at a Catholic church every morning so he could pray. Yet despite his lifelong piety he was accused by Anita Hill of a fascination with pornography and bizarre sexual practices such as bestiality. He has long opposed affirmative action, but bases this distrust on a distrust of white institutions which he believes keep blacks begging for jobs and other economic opportunities.

In a critical 1987 speech before the conservative Heritage Foundation, Thomas articulated his feelings about the perils of "entitlement" programs, job quotas, and--most notoriously--welfare. He had some years earlier shocked listeners by criticizing his sister for her dependency on welfare, though, according to Time's Jack E. White "she was not getting welfare checks when he singled her out but [was] working double shifts at a nursing home for slightly more than $2 an hour." But in this Heritage Foundation speech he articulated more specifically his concern about the "welfare mentality." Though Reagan and others on the right had rankled blacks and civil rights proponents with derisive references to "welfare queens," Thomas's criticisms may have been harder for his opponents to dismiss--or so the administration hoped.

Embraced Vision of Black Conservatism

The Heritage Foundation speech also outlined Thomas's plan for bringing more blacks into the ranks of conservatism. "I am of the view that black Americans will move inexorably and naturally toward conservatism when we stop discouraging them; when they are treated as a diverse group with differing interests; and when conservatives stand up for what they believe in rather than stand against blacks," he proclaimed. He went on to suggest that the "unnecessarily negative" approach of the Reagan administration had been more alienating than its political philosophy toward welfare and affirmative action. Many critics have attacked Thomas for this ardent individualism. Bruce Shapiro represented many of Thomas's opponents when he wrote in The Nation of Thomas's "far-reaching commitment to unravel the fabric of community and social responsibility."

Perhaps the most important strand of the Heritage Foundation speech was Thomas's invocation of natural law. This discussion provided the most substantial evidence of his judicial philosophy, and was particularly worrying to civil rights advocates and many people concerned about the fundamental separation of Church and State. The alarm of these constituencies was magnified by Thomas's citing of Heritage trustee Lewis Lehrman's argument on behalf of the rights of the fetus as grounded in the Declaration of Independence as "a splendid example of applying natural law." In brief, natural law depends on applying a perception of God-given rights and rules--as, indeed, the Declaration and other founding documents of the American republic do, at least rhetorically--to human law. "Without such a notion of natural law," Thomas claimed in his speech, "the entire American political tradition, from Washington to Lincoln, from Jefferson to Martin Luther King, would be unintelligible." Thus against what he perceives as the abstractions and inhumanity of the welfare state, he promotes a philosophy that "establishes our inherent equality as a God-given right." Yet many critics have expressed grave reservations about the implications of such a belief.

The Republican party, however, which saw potential in Thomas early on, began to see him as a good prospect for the nation's highest court. President Bush nominated him to the federal appeals court in 1990, and he was confirmed by the Senate in March of that year. The appeals court is a common stop on the route to the Supreme Court, and this was a route in which Thomas had expressed no uncertain interest. Bush nominated him in 1991. Still, his performance on the appeals court wasn't exactly impressive. "As Supreme Court nominees go," reported Margaret Carlson in a 1991 Time profile, "Thomas has little judicial experience. He is not a brilliant legal scholar, a weighty thinker, or even the author of numerous opinions." Bruce Shapiro was more blunt in the Nation, calling the judge "among the more scantily qualified Supreme Court candidates in recent memory."

Supreme Court Nomination Created Controversy

The stage was set for an ideological battle over Thomas's appointment even before Anita Hill went public with her accusations. The NAACP, after lengthy discussion and much internal upheaval, voted to oppose Thomas's confirmation. The chairman of the organization, William F. Gibson, read a statement featuring a seven-point argument for opposing Thomas. This statement, which was printed in its entirety in Crisis, reasoned that "Judge Clarence Thomas's judicial philosophy is simply inconsistent with the historical positions taken by the NAACP." The criticisms centered on Thomas's performance at the EEOC and what Gibson characterized as the judge's "reactionary philosophical approach to a number of critical issues, not the least of which is affirmative action." Oddly enough, the NAACP stressed the importance of looking past race in this instance--though it believes fervently in the importance of having African Americans on the Supreme Court--to focus on Thomas's record. Thus an organization traditionally affiliated with the "entitlement" sensibility Thomas so disliked had actually judged him on his merits. It found him wanting. Similarly, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) voted 20-1 to oppose Thomas's confirmation. The lone dissenter was also the CBC's only Republican.

Jesse Jackson, perhaps the most vocal black activist in the United States, was particularly critical of Thomas. In These Times quoted Jackson's remarks to a Chicago meeting of his organization, Operation PUSH: "He is a prime beneficiary of our [civil rights activists'] work. He got public accommodations, the right to vote, open housing because of civil rights marches and activism; yet he stood on our shoulders and kicked us in the head." John B. Judis, writing for In These Times, asserted that Thomas's praise for Lehrman's antiabortion article "puts him on the fanatic fringes of the abortion debate and could prove politically embarrassing to Republicans in 1992." Judis remarked on Thomas's celebration of former National Security Aide Oliver North--who had lied to Congress about his involvement in the famed Iran/Contra scandal--and concluded a lengthy examination of Thomas's legal thinking by declaring simply "that Clarence Thomas is not fit to be a Supreme Court justice."

George Bush expressed his support for Thomas largely on the basis of the judge's character. His life story, a real-world example of the conservative ideal, appeared in virtually every endorsement. Bush made no mention of Thomas's judicial temperament, nor of his decisions on the appeals court; it was clear that this appointment was a symbolic one. Strangely enough, Thomas's patron had chosen him because he was a successful black man. Whether Thomas privately considered himself a beneficiary of a White House "quota" remains unknown. In any case, Thomas's personal odyssey from Pin Point to the pinnacle of Washington, D.C., success, or some version of that odyssey, would always serve as an endorsement. Lena Williams's New York Times article concluded by referring to Thomas's "difficult childhood and his ability to succeed against the odds," an angle that the Bush administration would exploit to the utmost in its presentation of Thomas the judicial candidate.

Allegations of Sexual Harassment Surfaced

The Senate's confirmation hearings appeared to be moving along smoothly when Anita Hill's allegations were made public. On October 8, Hill--a professor at the University of Oklahoma Law School--held a press conference, in which she made public the main points of the testimony she had previously given the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI report had been reviewed by the confirmation committee but not made public, and on the day of Hill's press conference the Thomas vote was scheduled to move to the Senate floor. A wave of protest by women's groups and other activists led the committee, headed by Delaware's Joseph Biden, a Democrat, to review Hill's charges. Her testimony accused Thomas of badgering her for dates while she worked at the EEOC, and of accosting her with stories of pornographic film scenes and his own sexual prowess. The accusations fit the paradigm of sexual harassment in the workplace: the male superior uses sexual banter and other discomfiting tactics as a means of exercising power over a female underling. Hill claimed that Thomas's constant harassment made it difficult for her to do her job, and even caused her anxiety to manifest itself in the form of physical distress.

The televised hearings, during which Hill, Thomas, and several witnesses on both sides testified about the allegations, were among the most widely-viewed political events in television history. Thomas denied any wrongdoing, but stopped short of calling Hill a liar. Most of Thomas's political allies on the committee--Republican senators Strom Thurmond, Arlen Specter, Alan Simpson, and Orrin Hatch--interrogated Hill mercilessly, and suggested that Hill was either being cynically manipulated by liberals or was lying outright. Spy magazine reported that numerous young researchers had been recruited by the White House staff to find embarassing or otherwise damaging disclosures about Hill and her testimony. The partisan battle over the confirmation became so vicious that following the vote, considerable press attention was devoted to the Congress's political game-playing and the painful divisions it left among various constituencies.

Thomas himself remarked during the course of the televised hearings that the process had been a harrowing personal ordeal for him and his wife. Indeed, he claimed, he would have preferred "an assassin's bullet to this kind of living hell," and he would have withdrawn from consideration earlier had he known what lay ahead. Lewis Lapham's column in Harper's the following month attacked Thomas as a hypocrite: "He had the gall to present himself as a victim, a man who had been forced to endure the unspeakable agony of sitting comfortably in a chair for two weeks and being asked a series of facile questions to which he gave equally facile answers." Lapham asserted that Thomas displayed "contempt for the entire apparatus of the American idea--for Congress, for the press, for freedom of expression, for the uses of democratic government, for any rules other than his own."

Confirmation Followed Heated Hearings

Many blacks had supported Thomas and followed the Republicans' theory that Hill was part of a campaign to smear him. Many women who opposed Thomas and believed Hill vowed to defeat Thomas's backers in the next elections. Another ramification of the Hill-Thomas debacle was the major attention suddenly afforded the previously neglected question of sexual harrassment; the phrase entered the mainstream political vocabulary almost overnight. In any event, the verdict--in the minds of the committee and in the press--was that both witnesses were credible and that determining the truth of what had taken place nearly a decade before was well nigh impossible. The president urged Congress to give Thomas the benefit of the doubt, arguing that he was innocent until proven guilty. Others argued that Thomas was not on trial for harassing Hill, and that any doubt was sufficient to disqualify him. In the end, Thomas was confirmed by a 52-48 margin. To those who complained about the confirmation hearings' focus on these "personal" matters, the New Republic replied that "The Bush administration promoted Mr. Thomas's nomination as a matter of character, not of professional qualifications; and it has reaped a bitter reward."

Following the confirmation, Virginia Thomas told her story to People, recounting the tension of the confirmation fight and speculating that Anita Hill was in love with Clarence Thomas. She referred to the struggle to get Thomas confirmed as "Good versus Evil." Alisa Solomon, meanwhile, writing in the Village Voice, argued that Anita Hill was attacked for showing the same qualities for which Clarence Thomas was celebrated: her ability to argue, her aggressiveness, and her self-sufficiency. Thomas, Solomon wrote, "seems unable to see women as a class, and therefore unable to recognize the importance of rulings that affect us."

Clarence Thomas had made it to the top, and his defiant individual style and renegade opinions had left him with many admirers and many detractors. The question on most observers' minds was this: Would Thomas be the gadfly on a conservative court, or would he fall in line with its prevailing right-leaning tendencies? His experience prior to his confirmation guaranteed that he would be watched just as closely after he donned the robes.

Judicial Decision Brought Criticism

During the first few years after his appointment to the Supreme Court, Thomas remained quiet and out of the limelight that had shone on him for most of his career. He did not ask questions during oral arguments, he wrote few decisions or dissension to these decisions, and most often followed the lead of other conservative justices such as O'Conner and Scalia. Then, starting in 1994, Thomas came into his own as a justice as he became the deciding vote in numerous controversial cases, many dealing with issues of race and free speech. One specific case that many minorities took to heart was Adarand Constructors Inc. vs. Pena where a white owner of a construction company sued the state of Colorado for unfair hiring practices due to affirmative action. Randy Pech, the plaintiff in the case, argued that the state had awarded an Hispanic-owned company the job of redoing highways based purely on the fact that the company was Hispanic-owned and run. Pech contended that he was the victim of reverse-racism and that this was not the purpose of the affirmative action program. The issue was contested heavily both within the court as well as in the media, where many people felt that if Pech won his case that it would be the beginning of the deconstruction of the affirmative action program that greatly helped many minorities secure jobs and education. When the final decision came down, in favor of Pech by one vote, 5-4, it was discovered that Thomas had voted in favor of the majority.

Another example of Thomas's controversial decision making came from the case Missouri vs. Jenkins. In this case, the state of Missouri was suing a district judge for forcing them to "waste" money in order to bring more white students into predominately black city schools that were receiving fewer funds from their community than suburban schools that were mainly made up of white students. Once again the case was heavily disputed in the court and once again the decision came out in favor of the plaintiff, with the court split 5-4. Many critics of the decision felt that this was a major blow to the idea that desegregation, whether natural or forced, would bring equality to educational institutions, but Thomas shot back with his own views, which were summed up later in Insight on the News magazine: "He added that a school's majority black status is not a constitutional violation in and of itself and wondered why there was an assumption that 'anything that is predominantly black must be inferior.'"

Both of these decisions outraged many in the African-American community, who felt that Thomas had turned into an "Uncle Tom," completely controlled by the conservative right who traditionally downplayed the needs of minorities. Yet Thomas felt that it was his job not to play favorites to any one community, but instead to show impartiality in his decisions and to try and follow the letter of the law. As he told Jet magazine, "I cannot do to White people what an elite group of Whites did to Black people, because if I do, I am just as bad as they are. I can't break from ... law just because they did. If they were wrong in doing that (using law to discriminate) to us, then I am wrong in doing it to them."

Gained Respect Along With Criticism

Since 1994 Thomas has continued to make decisions that were not popular in the African-American community. However, as he remained constant in his decisions, he also gained the respect of many people in the field who assumed the worst of him after the Anita Hill hearings. Ronald Rotunda, a professor at the University of Illinois said to the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, "He thinks independently and it's unfair to think of him as a knee-jerk conservative." Many people still feel however that Thomas has somehow "betrayed" the needs of minorities, specifically those of the African-American community. Yet as Thomas told Newsweek, "It pains me more deeply than any of you can imagine, to be perceived by so many members of my race as doing them harm ... All the sacrifices and all the long hours of preparation were to help not to hurt."

One area that Thomas receives little criticism in is his family life. Although married for the second time, it is clear that Thomas is devoted to his wife and to fostering a healthy relationship. Even more evident is Thomas's love for his extended family. In 1997 he took custody of his grandnephew, Mark Martin, Jr., in order to give him the opportunity to succeed, something he would not have received with his parents. The American Lawyer, explained the circumstances: "Mark Sr., Thomas's nephew, had been in prison on cocaine-trafficking charges. And Mark Jr.'s mother Susan was struggling with her own problems, raising four children, including young Mark Jr., on her own. Thomas believed that the boy would face lifelong trouble if he were not removed from his environment soon, and the parents agreed." According to a friend in the same American Laywer article, "He was paying back his own grandfather by taking care of Mark."

An Ebony magazine article said that "Thomas's struggle against the tradition of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and his exile from mainstream Black America is one of the strangest stories of our time." Yet many critics wondered if the controversy around his decisions would fade as time went by and he remained a steady advocate for more conservative justice. Yet as recently as 2002, institutions in the African-American community have publicly questioned his methods and protested his appointment to the highest court in the nation. Five professors at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill boycotted a visit that was to be given by Thomas to allow students to discuss and interact with the justice. According to the protestors, in the New Jersey Law Journal the reason for the protest was that "For many people who hold legitimate expectations for racial equality and social justice, Justice Thomas personifies the cruel irony of the fireboat burning and sinking ... his visit adds insult to injury." Thomas, however, takes comments such as these in stride, for as he told Newsweek he has the "right to think for myself." He went on to say that he refused "to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black." In 2003, M2 Best Books reported that Harper Collins made a deal with Thomas to publish a book that would "trace his life from his upbringing through his confirmation to the court," in order for people to better understand why he chooses the way that he does.

Further Reading

• American Lawyer, August 2001, p. 76.
• American Spectator, October 1991.
• Crisis, August/September 1991.
• Harper's, December 1991.
• In These Times, July 24, 1991; August 7, 1991; October 23, 1991.
• Insight on the News, September 4, 1995, pp. 8-10.
• Jet, November 28, 1994, p. 22; September 11, 1995, p. 8.
• Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, July 2, 1995.
• M2 Best Books, January 10, 2003.
• Nation, September 23, 1991; October 14, 1991; October 28, 1991; November 4, 1991; November 11, 1991.
• New Jersey Law Journal March 18, 2002, pp. 6-7.
• New Republic, October 28, 1991.
• Newsweek, September 16, 1991; October 21, 1991; October 28, 1991; August 10, 1998, p. 53.
• New York Times, February 8, 1987; October 8, 1991.
• People, October 28, 1991; November 11, 1991.
• Policy Review, Fall 1991.
• Spy, December 1991.
• Time, September 16, 1991; October 28, 1991.
• U.S. News & World Report, October 21, 1991.
• Village Voice, October 22, 1991.

— Simon Glickman and Ralph G. Zerbonia

• Born: June 23, 1948, Savannah, Ga.
• Education: Holy Cross College, B.A., 1970; Yale Law School, LL.B., 1973
• Previous government service: assistant to the Missouri attorney general, 1973–77; legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth, 1979–81; assistant secretary of education, Civil Rights Division, 1981–82; chairman, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 1982–90; judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 1990–91
• Appointed by President George Bush July 1, 1991; replaced Thurgood Marshall, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Oct. 15, 1991, by a vote of 52–48

Clarence Thomas became, at the age of 43, the second black associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He replaced Thurgood Marshall, the first African American on the Court. Thomas's road to the pinnacle of judicial power, however, was filled with obstacles.

Clarence Thomas rose to prominence from humble origins. He was raised by his grandfather, Myers Anderson, after his father abandoned him. Although poor, Anderson was a proud man with high hopes for his grandson. He pushed Thomas to excel in school and provided discipline and stability for his grandson. Thomas responded with high achievement in school that led him eventually to graduate from Yale Law School in 1973.

Thomas's first job as a lawyer was in Missouri, where he worked for the attorney general, John Danforth. Later, Danforth was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican, and Thomas went to Washington as the Senator's legislative assistant. During the 1980s, Thomas, with support from Senator Danforth, achieved top-level jobs in the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In 1990, President George Bush appointed Thomas to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Eighteen months later, Thurgood Marshall resigned from the Supreme Court at the age of 82. On July 1, 1991, President Bush nominated Thomas to replace Justice Marshall. The President said: “If credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better. It proves he can do it, get the job done. And so that does nothing but enhance the Court, in my view.”

Standing next to the President, Clarence Thomas replied: “In my view, only in America could this have been possible…. As a child I could not dare dream that I would ever see the Supreme Court, not to mention be nominated to it.”

The move from nomination to Senate confirmation was difficult for Thomas and the President. After several days of hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee was sharply divided along partisan lines in its evaluation of Thomas. The Democrats, with one exception, clearly opposed his nomination, and the Republican members of the committee favored it. The committee vote was deadlocked, seven members for Thomas and seven against him.

Suddenly, the confirmation process became embroiled in controversy. Anita Hill, a former employee of Thomas at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charged him with sexual harassment. The Senate Judiciary Committee conducted special sessions to examine these charges by Hill. After three days of intense and acrimonious discussion of this issue, the Senate Judiciary Committee concluded its work and sent Thomas's nomination to the Senate for a final decision. The Senate committee vote remained at seven for Thomas and seven against him.

The Senate voted to confirm Justice Thomas by a vote of 52 to 48. This was the closest vote of approval for a Supreme Court appointment in more than 100 years. Eleven Democrats joined 41 Republicans to vote for Justice Thomas.

Justice Thomas has performed carefully and competently. At first, he usually joined with Justice Antonin Scalia when presenting concurring or dissenting opinions. Since 1994, however, Thomas has often acted independently to challenge conventional legal positions. For example, he wrote the Court's opinion in Wilson v. Arkansas (1995), which revived the old English common law “knock and announce” rule to augment the 4th Amendment's protection against unwarranted or unreasonable searches and seizures. This common law rule requires law-enforcement officers to announce their presence before entering a home or place of business.

Sources

• Jane Flax, The American Dream in Black & White: The Clarence Thomas Hearings (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). Scott Douglas Gerber, First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas (New York: New York University Press, 1999)

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas survived tense, nationally televised Senate confirmation hearings in 1991 to become the second African American in U.S. history to reach the High Court.

Thomas was born June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, Georgia, a small town near Savannah. He attended Savannah's Saint Benedict the Moor, Saint Pius X High School, and Saint John Vianney Minor Seminary. When he graduated from Saint John in 1967, he was the only African American in his class. After just one year as a seminarian at Missouri's Immaculate Conception Seminary, Thomas abandoned his plans to become a priest. Instead, he enrolled in Massachusetts's Holy Cross College. After graduating in 1971, he attended Connecticut's Yale University Law School, and earned a doctor of jurisprudence degree in 1974.

Thomas married Kathy Grace Ambush in 1971. The couple had a son, Jamal Thomas, in 1973, and divorced in 1984. In 1986, he married Virginia Lamp, a political activist and a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Labor.

Thomas's first job out of law school was as assistant to Missouri's Republican attorney general John C. Danforth. Thomas specialized in tax and environmental issues. In 1977 he accepted a position in the law department of Monsanto Chemical Corporation. Thomas returned to public service in 1979, when Danforth was elected to the U.S. Senate. Danforth invited Thomas to work for him as a legislative aide in Washington, D.C.

Thomas's star rose quickly during the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan. In 1981 he was appointed assistant secretary in the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education. It was here that his path crossed that of Anita Hill, a recent Yale University Law School graduate. In 1982, when Thomas became chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Hill also moved to the federal agency.

In 1990 Thomas became a federal judge for the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. In 1991 President George Bush nominated Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. During the confirmation process, Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her while she worked for him at the EEOC. After tense hearings before the U.S. Senate, Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48. On October 18, 1991, he was sworn in as the 106th justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thomas is known as a conservative justice, voting to uphold states' rights and limit the powers of the federal government. He frequently votes with Justice Antonin Scalia and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

CROSS-REFERENCES: Hill, Anita Faye.

Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Incumbent
Assumed office  October 18, 1991[1]
Nominated by	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Thurgood Marshall
Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit
In office 1990 – 1991
Nominated by	George H.W. Bush
Preceded by	Robert Bork
Succeeded by	Judith Ann Wilson Rogers
8th Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [2]
In office 1982 – 1990
Preceded by	Eleanor Holmes Norton
Succeeded by	Evan J. Kemp, Jr.
Born	June 23, 1948 (1948-06-23) (age 61) Pin Point, Georgia
Spouse(s)	Kate Ambush Thomas (divorced) Virginia Lamp Thomas
Children	Jamal Adeen Thomas
Alma mater	College of the Holy Cross Yale Law School
Religion	Roman Catholic[3]

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who has served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. Thomas is the second African-American to serve on the Court, after Thurgood Marshall, whom he succeeded.

Thomas grew up in Georgia and was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and at Yale Law School. In 1974, he was appointed an Assistant Attorney General in Missouri (primarily handling tax matters), and subsequently practiced law there in the private sector. In 1979, he became a legislative assistant to Missouri Senator John Danforth and in 1981 was appointed Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. In 1982, Thomas was appointed Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and served in that position until 1990, when President George H. W. Bush nominated him for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

After one year of judicial experience, Bush nominated Thomas to fill the seat on the United States Supreme Court vacated by Thurgood Marshall. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering around accusations that he had sexually harassed a subordinate at the EEOC, attorney Anita Hill. Thomas was ultimately confirmed by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest Supreme Court confirmation vote of the 20th century.^[4]

Since joining the Court, Thomas has taken a strict constructionist approach to judging, seeking to uphold what he sees as the original meaning of the United States Constitution and statutes. He is generally viewed as among the most conservative members of the Court. Thomas has often approached federalism issues in a way that limits the power of the federal government and expands power of state and local governments. At the same time, Thomas' opinions have generally supported a strong executive branch within the federal government.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Influences 3 Personal life 4 Career 4.1 Early career 4.2 Federal judge 4.3 Supreme Court nomination and confirmation 4.3.1 Anita Hill allegations 4.4 Early years on the Court 5 Judicial philosophy 5.1 Conservatism and originalism 5.2 Voting alignment 5.3 Number of dissenting opinions 5.4 Stare decisis 5.5 Commerce Clause 5.6 Federalism 5.7 Executive power 5.8 Free speech 5.9 Fourth Amendment 5.10 Eighth Amendment and capital punishment 5.11 Church and state 5.12 Equal protection 5.13 Abortion 5.14 Judicial review 6 Approach to oral arguments 7 Public perception 8 Writings 9 See also 10 Footnotes and references 11 Further reading 12 External links

Early life and education

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia, a small, impoverished African-American community, which had no sewage system or paved roads. He was the second of three children born to M.C. Thomas, a farm worker, and Leola Williams, a domestic worker,^[5][6] and is a descendant of American slaves. M.C. Thomas left his family when Thomas was two years old. Thomas' mother worked hard but was sometimes paid only pennies per day. She had difficulty putting food on the table and was forced to rely on charity.^[7] After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother Myers were taken to Savannah, Georgia. (Thomas's sister Emma stayed behind with relatives in Pin Point).

When Thomas was seven, the family moved in with his maternal grandfather, Myers Anderson, and Anderson's wife, Christine (née Hargrove), in Savannah.^[8] There, Thomas enjoyed indoor plumbing and regular meals for the first time in his life.^[5] His grandfather, Myers Anderson, had little formal education, but had built a fuel oil business that also sold ice. Thomas calls his grandfather "the greatest man I have ever known."^[8] When Thomas was 10, Anderson started taking the family to help at a farm every day from sunrise to sunset.^[8] His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance; he would counsel Thomas to "never let the sun catch you in bed." Thomas's grandfather also impressed upon his grandsons the importance of getting a good education.^[5]

Thomas was the only black person at his high school in Savannah, where he was an honor student.^[9] Raised Roman Catholic (he later attended an Episcopal church with his wife but returned to the Catholic Church in the late 1990s). He considered entering the priesthood at the age of 16, becoming the first black student to attend St. John Vianney's Minor Seminary (Savannah) on the Isle of Hope.^[8] He also briefly attended Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. No one in Thomas's family had attended college and Thomas has said that during his first year in seminary he was one of only "three or four" blacks attending the school.^[9] Thomas told interviewers that he left the seminary after overhearing a student say, in response to the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr., "Good, I hope the son of a bitch died."^[6][10] He did not think the church did enough to combat racism.^[8]

At a nun's suggestion, Thomas attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where as a sophomore transfer student he had to adjust to a New England atmosphere very different from what he was used to in Savannah.^[9] At Holy Cross, Thomas helped found the Black Student Union and once walked out after an incident in which black students were punished while white students were not for committing the same violation.^[9] Some of the priests negotiated with the protesting black students to return to school,^[9] and Thomas graduated in 1971 with an A.B. cum laude in English literature. Among Thomas's classmates at Holy Cross were future defense attorney Ted Wells and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones.^[11]

Thomas had a series of deferments from the military draft while in college at Holy Cross. Upon graduation, he was classified as 1-A and received a low lottery number, indicating that he might be drafted to serve in Vietnam. But Thomas failed his medical exam, reportedly due to curvature of the spine, and was not drafted.^[12] Thomas then entered Yale Law School, from which he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974, graduating towards the middle of his class.^[13]

Thomas has recollected that his Yale law degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied after graduating, and potential employers assumed he obtained it because of affirmative action policies.^[14] According to Thomas, he was "asked pointed questions, unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated."^[15]

Influences

In 1975, when Thomas read Race and Economics by economist Thomas Sowell, he found an intellectual foundation for this philosophy.^[7][16] The book criticized social reforms by government and instead argued for individual action to overcome circumstances and adversity. He was also influenced by Ayn Rand,^[17] particularly The Fountainhead, and would later require his staffers to watch the 1949 film version.^[7] Thomas later said that novelist Richard Wright had been the most influential writer in his life; Wright's books Native Son and Black Boy "capture[d] a lot of the feelings that I had inside that you learn how to repress."^[18]

Personal life

Thomas has one child, Jamal Adeen, from his first marriage. This marriage, to college sweetheart Kathy Grace Ambush, lasted from 1971 until their 1981 separation and 1984 divorce.^[18][19] In 1987, Thomas married Virginia Lamp, a lobbyist, aide to Congressman Dick Armey, and subsequently an executive director at the conservative Heritage Foundation.^[20] In 1997 they took in one of Thomas' great nephews.^[21]

Since joining the Supreme Court, Thomas requested an annulment of his first marriage from the Roman Catholic Church, which was granted. He was reconciled to the Church in the mid-1990s and remains a practicing Catholic,^[22][23] although he criticized the Church in his 2007 autobiography for its approach to racism in the 1960s, saying it was not as "adamant about ending racism then as it is about ending abortion now."^[24] Thomas is one of thirteen Catholic justices—out of 110 justices total—in the history of the Supreme Court, and one of six currently on the Court.^[25]

In 1994, Thomas performed the wedding ceremony for radio host Rush Limbaugh and his wife, Marta Fitzgerald.^[26]

Career

Early career

Official Equal Employment Opportunity Commission portrait of Thomas

From 1974 to 1977, Thomas was an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri under then State Attorney General John Danforth. When Danforth was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 to 1979, Thomas left to become an attorney with Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri. He moved to Washington, D.C. and returned to work for Danforth from 1979 to 1981 as a Legislative Assistant. Both men shared a common bond in that both had studied to be ordained (although in different denominations). Danforth was to be instrumental in championing Thomas for the Supreme Court.

In 1981, he joined the Reagan administration. From 1981 to 1982, he served as Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. From 1982 to 1990 he was Chairman of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC"). Newsweek characterized Thomas as "openly ambitious for higher office" during his tenure at the EEOC. As Chairman, he promoted a doctrine of self-reliance, and halted the usual EEOC approach of filing class-action discrimination lawsuits, instead pursuing specific acts of individual discrimination.^[27] He also asserted in 1984 that black leaders were "watching the destruction of our race" as they "bitch, bitch, bitch" about President Reagan instead of working with the Reagan administration to alleviate teenage pregnancy, unemployment and illiteracy.^[28]

Federal judge

In June 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, despite Thomas's initial protestations that he would not like to be a judge.^[29] Thomas gained the support of other African-Americans such as former Transportation Secretary William Coleman, but said that when meeting white Democratic staffers in the United States Senate, he was "struck by how easy it had become for sanctimonious whites to accuse a black man of not caring about civil rights."^[29]

Thomas's confirmation hearing was uneventful,^[30] and he developed warm relationships during his 19 months on the federal court, including with fellow federal judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg.^[29][31]

Supreme Court nomination and confirmation

Main article: Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination

When Justice William Brennan stepped down in 1990, Bush wanted to nominate Thomas as Brennan's replacement; since he felt that replacing Marshall (who was expected to be retiring soon; leaving another open seat on the Court) with Thomas could imply that he received the appointment out of tokenism, but Bush then decided that Thomas had not yet had enough experience as a judge after only months on the federal bench.^[29] Bush therefore nominated Judge David Souter of the First Circuit instead.^[29]

After the appointment of David Souter and the ensuing disappointment of conservatives, White House chief of staff John H. Sununu promised that the president would fill the next Supreme Court vacancy with a "true conservative" and Sununu predicted a "knock-down, drag-out, bloody-knuckles, grass-roots fight" over confirmation.^[32][33] On July 1, 1991 President Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had recently announced his retirement.^[34] Marshall had been the only African-American justice on the Court. Legal author Jeffrey Toobin says Bush and others saw Thomas as "pretty much" the only qualified black candidate who would be a reliable conservative vote.^[35]

President Bush said that Thomas was the "best qualified [nominee] at this time."^[29] The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated Thomas "qualified" by a vote of 13 to 2.^[36] Reagan nominee Robert Bork received twice as many “not qualified” votes as Thomas, and several nominees of Richard Nixon were rated as “not qualified” by a majority of that ABA committee.^[37] However, the ABA rating of Thomas was the least favorable of any confirmed Supreme Court nominee dating back to the Eisenhower administration (most nominees receive unanimous "well qualified" evaluations).^[36] Thomas had never argued a case in the high courts, though others have also been appointed without Supreme Court oral argument experience,^[38] and prior to Thomas, forty Supreme Court justices had been appointed without any prior judicial service (though none have since).^[39] Thomas had never written a legal book, article, or brief of any consequence, and had been a judge for only a year.^[38]

Organizations including the NAACP, the Urban League and the National Organization for Women opposed the appointment based on Thomas's criticism of affirmative action and suspicions that Thomas might not be a supporter of the Supreme Court judgment in Roe v. Wade; NOW and the NAACP had also protested Bush's previous Court appointee, David Souter.^[40] Under questioning during confirmation hearings, Thomas repeatedly asserted that he had not formulated a position on the Roe decision.^[41]

Some of the public statements of Thomas's opponents foreshadowed the confirmation fight that would occur. One such statement came from activist Florynce Kennedy at a July 1991 conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City. Making reference to the failure of Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork, she said of Thomas, "We're going to 'bork' him."^[42] The liberal campaign to defeat the Bork nomination served as a model for liberal interest groups opposing Thomas.^[43] Likewise, in view of what had happened to Bork, Thomas's confirmation hearings were also approached as a political campaign by the White House and Senate Republicans.^[44]

Clarence Thomas's formal confirmation hearings began on September 10, 1991.^[35] Thomas was reticent when answering Senators' questions during the appointment process.^[45] Four years earlier, Robert Bork, a law professor, had expounded on his judicial philosophy during his confirmation, and he had been refused confirmation.^[38] Whereas Thomas' earlier writings had frequently referenced the legal theory of natural law, Thomas distanced himself from that controversial stance during his confirmation hearings, giving the impression that he had no views.^[38][46][47] Thomas himself later asserted in his autobiography that in the course of his professional career, he had not developed a judicial philosophy.

Anita Hill allegations

Main article: Allegations by Anita Hill

Toward the end of the confirmation hearings, an FBI interview with Anita Hill was leaked. Hill, an attorney, had worked for Thomas at the Department of Education and the EEOC. After the leak, she was called to testify at Thomas's confirmation hearings, where she alleged that Thomas had subjected her to inappropriate comments of a sexual nature, stopping short of making a legal claim of sexual harassment, saying: "I did not bring the information forward to try to establish a legal claim for sexual harassment."^[48] Hill's testimony included lurid details, and she was aggressively questioned by some Senators.^[49]

Thomas denied the allegations, stating:

This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.^[50]

Clarence Thomas being sworn in by Byron White, as wife Virginia Lamp Thomas looks on.

Hill was the only person to testify at the Senate hearings against Thomas. Angela Wright, who worked with Thomas at the EEOC before he fired her,^[51] decided not to testify,^[52] but alleged similar improprieties in a written statement, saying that Thomas had repeatedly made sexual comments to her, commenting on her body or pressuring her for dates.^[53] [10] Also, Sukari Hardnett, a former Thomas assistant, wrote to the Senate committee saying that although Thomas had not harassed her, "if you were young, black, female, reasonably attractive and worked directly for Clarence Thomas, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female."^[54][55]

Other former colleagues testified on Thomas's behalf. Nancy Altman, who shared an office with Thomas at the Department of Education, testified that she "could hear virtually every conversation for two years that Clarence Thomas had ... [and n]ot once in those two years did I ever hear Clarence Thomas make a sexist or offensive comment...." Altman said that it was "not credible that Clarence Thomas could have engaged in the kinds of behavior that Anita Hill alleges, without any of the women who he worked closest with—dozens of us, we could spend days having women come up, his secretaries, his chief of staff, his other assistants, his colleagues—without any of us having sensed, seen or heard something."^[56] Senator Alan K. Simpson was puzzled about why Hill and Thomas met, dined, and spoke by phone on various occasions after they no longer worked together.^[57]

According to the Oyez Project, there was a lack of convincing proof produced at the Senate hearings.^[5] After extensive debate, the Judiciary Committee split 7–7 on September 27, sending the nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation. Thomas was confirmed by a 52–48 vote on October 15, 1991, the narrowest margin for approval in more than a century.^[58] The final floor vote was mostly along party lines: 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats voted to confirm while 46 Democrats and two Republicans voted to reject the nomination.

Thomas' swearing-in was moved ahead of schedule and carried out informally, as the White House was concerned that additional stories about Thomas' private life might surface before he could be sworn in.^[44] On October 23, 1991, Thomas took his seat as the 106th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post received information potentially corroborating Hill's charges and contradicting some of Thomas' sworn testimony; however, as had already become a sitting Supreme Court Justice, the paper's editors decided not to proceed with additional investigation and reporting on the subject.^[44]

The debate over who was telling the truth continues, and several books have been written about the original hearings and testimony that could have been presented. Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill have both written autobiographies that include their takes on the hearings. The conduct, meaning, and outcome of the hearings are still vigorously disputed by all sides.

Early years on the Court

Upon his appointment, Thomas was generally perceived as joining the conservative wing of the Court, voting most frequently with Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia.^[59] Though Thomas was immediately welcomed by most Justices, including Marshall, whom he was replacing, law clerks of some liberal justices viewed Thomas with contempt, questioning his qualifications and intellectual heft.^[60] Legal reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg says that pundits' portrayal of Thomas as Antonin Scalia's understudy was grossly inaccurate - she says that from early on, it was more often Scalia changing his mind to agree with Thomas, rather than the other way around.^[61][62] On the other hand, Greenburg suggests that the forcefulness of Thomas's views pushed Justices Souter, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Anthony Kennedy away.^[61]

Judicial philosophy

Conservatism and originalism

Justice Thomas is often described as an originalist, as well as a member of the "far right" of the Supreme Court.^[5][63][64] He is often described as the most conservative member of the Supreme Court,^[13][65][66] although others give Justice Scalia that designation.^[67][68][69] Scalia himself, contrasting his own judicial philosophy to Thomas' in 2005, said: "I am an originalist, but I am not a nut."^[70]

Justice Thomas also acknowledges having some "libertarian leanings."^[71]

Voting alignment

On average, from 1994 to 2004, Justices Scalia and Thomas had an 86.7% voting alignment, the highest on the Court, followed by Ginsburg and Souter (85.6%).^[72] Scalia and Thomas's agreement rate peaked in 1996, at 97.7%.^[72] More recently, in a given year, other pairs of justices have had alignments closer than Scalia and Thomas.^[73]

The conventional wisdom that Thomas's votes follow Antonin Scalia's is reflected by Linda Greenhouse's observation that Thomas voted with Scalia 91 percent of the time during October Term 2006, and with Justice John Paul Stevens the least, 36% of the time.^[74] Statistics compiled annually by Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog demonstrate that Greenhouse's count is methodology-specific, counting non-unanimous cases where Scalia and Thomas voted for the same litigant, regardless of whether they got there by the same reasoning.^[75] Goldstein's statistics show that the two agreed in full only 74% of the time, and that the frequency of agreement between Scalia and Thomas is not as outstanding as is often implied by pieces aimed at lay audiences. For example, in that same term, Justices Souter and Ginsburg voted together 81% of the time by the method of counting that yields a 74% agreement between Thomas and Scalia; by the metric that produces the 91% Scalia/Thomas figure, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer agreed 90% of the time, and Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito agreed 94% of the time.^[76]

Legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg wrote in her book on the Supreme Court that Justice Thomas's forceful views moved moderates like Sandra Day O'Connor further to the left, but frequently attracted votes from former Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia.^[77] Mark Tushnet and Jeffrey Toobin both observe that Rehnquist rarely assigned important majority opinions to Thomas, because the latter's views made it difficult for him to persuade a majority of justices to join him.^[78]

Number of dissenting opinions

From 1994 to 2004, on average, Justice Thomas was the third most frequent dissenter on the Court, behind Justices Stevens and Scalia.^[72] Four other justices dissented as frequently in 2007.^[79] Three other justices dissented as frequently in 2006.^[80] One other justice dissented as frequently in 2005.^[81]

Stare decisis

See also: Stare decisis#Application to the U.S. legal system

According to law professor Michael J. Gerhardt, Thomas has supported leaving a broad spectrum of constitutional decisions intact.^[82] Justice Thomas supports statutory stare decisis.^[83] During his confirmation hearings Thomas said: "[S]tare decisis provides continuity to our system, it provides predictability, and in our process of case-by-case decision making, I think it is a very important and critical concept."^[84] Among the thirteen justices who served on the Rehnquist Court, Thomas ranked eleventh for the number of votes he cast overturning precedent (without accounting for length of Court service).^[85] However, on a frequency basis, he urged overruling and joined in overruling precedents more frequently than any other justice.^[85]

According to Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas is more willing to overrule constitutional cases: "If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right. I wouldn't do that."^[86] Thomas's belief in originalism is strong; he has said, "When faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution's original meaning."^[87] Thomas believes that an erroneous decision can and should be overturned, no matter how old it is.^[87]

Commerce Clause

Justice Thomas has consistently supported narrowing the Court's interpretation of the Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause (which is often simply called the "Commerce Clause") so as to limit federal power and allow states more power to regulate intrastate commerce. At the same time, Thomas has broadly interpreted states' sovereign immunity from lawsuits under the Commerce Clause.^[88]

In both United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison, the Court held that Congress lacked power under the Commerce Clause to regulate non-commercial activities. In both of those cases, Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion arguing for the original meaning of the Commerce Clause. Subsequently, in Gonzales v. Raich, the Court interpreted the Interstate Commerce Clause combined with the Necessary and Proper Clause so as to empower the federal government to arrest, prosecute, and imprison patients who used marijuana grown at home for medicinal purposes. Thomas dissented in Raich, again arguing for the original meaning of the Commerce Clause.

Both Justices Thomas and Scalia have rejected the notion of a Dormant Commerce Clause, also known as the “Negative Commerce Clause.” That doctrine bars state commercial regulation even if Congress has not yet acted on the matter.^[89]

In Lopez, Thomas expressed his view that any federal regulation of either manufacturing or agriculture is unconstitutional; he sees both as outside the scope of the Commerce Clause.^[90][91] He believes federal legislators have overextended the Commerce Clause, while some of his critics argue that Thomas’s position about Congressional authority would invalidate much of the contemporary work of the federal government.^[91] According to Justice Thomas, it is not the Court's job to update the Constitution, whereas proponents of broad national power such as Professor Michael Dorf deny that they are trying to update the Constitution, and instead say they are merely addressing a set of economic facts that did not exist when the Constitution was framed.^[92]

Federalism

Federalism was a central part of the Rehnquist Court's constitutional agenda.^[93] Justice Thomas consistently voted for outcomes that promoted state-governmental authority, in cases involving federalism-based limits on Congress’s enumerated powers.^[93] According to law professor Ann Althouse, the Court has yet to move toward "the broader, more principled version of federalism propounded by Justice Thomas."^[94]

In Foucha v. Louisiana, Justice Thomas dissented from the majority opinion which required the removal from a mental institution of a prisoner who had become sane.^[95] The Court held that a Louisiana statute violated the Due Process Clause "because it allows an insanity acquittee to be committed to a mental institution until he is able to demonstrate that he is not dangerous to himself and others, even though he does not suffer from any mental illness."^[96] Dissenting, Thomas cast the issue as a matter of federalism.^[95] "Removing sane insanity acquittees from mental institutions may make eminent sense as a policy matter," he concluded, "but the Due Process Clause does not require the States to conform to the policy preferences of federal judges."^[96]

Executive power

Thomas has argued that the executive branch has broad authority under the Constitution and federal statutes. In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, he was the only justice who agreed with the Fourth Circuit that Congress had power to authorize the President's detention of US citizens who are enemy combatants. Thomas granted the federal government the "strongest presumptions" and said "due process requires nothing more than a good-faith executive determination" to justify the imprisonment of Hamdi, a US citizen.^[97]

Thomas also was one of three justices who dissented in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay required explicit congressional authorization, and held that the commissions conflicted with both the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and "at least" Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.^[98] Thomas argued that Hamdan was an illegal combatant and therefore not protected by the Geneva Convention, and he also agreed with Justice Scalia that the Court was "patently erroneous" in its declaration of jurisdiction in this case.

Free speech

Among the nine justices, Thomas was the second most likely to uphold free speech claims (tied with David Souter), as of 2002.^[99] He has voted in favor of First Amendment claims in cases involving a wide variety of issues, including pornography, campaign contributions, political leafletting, religious speech, and commercial speech.

On occasion, however, he has disagreed with free speech claimants. For example, he dissented in Virginia v. Black, a case that struck down a Virginia statute that banned cross-burning. Concurring in Morse v. Frederick, he argued that students' free speech rights in public schools are limited.^[100]

Thomas authored the decision in ACLU v. Ashcroft, which held that the Child Online Protection Act might (or might not) be constitutional. The government was enjoined from enforcing it, pending further proceedings in the lower courts.^[101]

Fourth Amendment

In cases regarding the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, Thomas often favors police over defendants. For example, his opinion for the Court in Board of Education v. Earls upheld drug testing for students involved in extracurricular activities, and he wrote again for the Court in Samson v. California, permitting random searches on parolees. He dissented in the case Georgia v. Randolph, which prohibited warrantless searches that one resident approves and the other opposes, arguing that the case was controlled by the Court's decision in Coolidge v. New Hampshire. In Indianapolis v. Edmond, Thomas described the Court's extant case law as having held that "suspicionless roadblock seizures are constitutionally permissible if conducted according to a plan that limits the discretion of the officers conducting the stops." Although he expressed doubt that those cases were correctly decided, he concluded that since the litigants in the case at bar had not briefed or argued that the earlier cases be overruled, he believed that the Court should assume their validity and rule accordingly.^[102] There are counterexamples, however: he was in the majority in Kyllo v. United States, which held that the use of thermal imaging technology to probe a suspect's home, without a warrant, violated the Fourth Amendment.

In cases involving schools, Thomas has advocated greater respect for the doctrine of in loco parentis, which he defines as "parents delegat[ing] to teachers their authority to discipline and maintain order."^[103] His dissent in Safford Unified School District v. Redding illustrates his application of this postulate in the Fourth Amendment context. School officials in the Safford case had a reasonable suspicion that 13-year-old Savana Reading was illegally distributing prescription-only drugs. All of the justices concurred that it was therefore reasonable for the school officials to search Ms. Reading, and the main issue before the Court was only whether the search went too far by becoming a strip search or the like.^[103] All justices but Thomas concluded that this search violated the Fourth Amendment. The majority required a finding of danger or reason to believe drugs were hidden in a student's underwear in order to justify a strip search. In contrast, Thomas said, "It is a mistake for judges to assume the responsibility for deciding which school rules are important enough to allow for invasive searches and which rules are not”^[104] and that "reasonable suspicion that Redding was in possession of drugs in violation of these policies, therefore, justified a search extending to any area where small pills could be concealed." Thomas said, "There can be no doubt that a parent would have had the authority to conduct the search."^[103]

Eighth Amendment and capital punishment

Justice Thomas was among the dissenters in both Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, which held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the application of the death penalty to certain classes of persons. In Kansas v. Marsh, his opinion for the Court indicated a belief that the Constitution affords states broad procedural latitude in imposing the death penalty, provided they remain within the limits of Furman v. Georgia and Gregg v. Georgia, the 1976 case in which the Court had reversed its 1972 ban on death sentences as long as states followed certain procedural guidelines.

In Hudson v. McMillian, a prisoner had been beaten, garnering a cracked lip, broken dental plate, loosened teeth, and cuts and bruises. Although these were not "serious injuries," the Court believed, it held that "[t]he use of excessive physical force against a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment even though the inmate does not suffer serious injury."^[105] Dissenting, Thomas wrote that, in his view, "a use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a prisoner may be immoral, it may be tortious, it may be criminal, and it may even be remediable under other provisions of the Federal Constitution, but it is not 'cruel and unusual punishment.' In concluding to the contrary, the Court today goes far beyond our precedents.”^[105] Thomas's vote - in one of his first cases after joining the Court - was an early example of his willingness to be the sole dissenter (Scalia later joined the opinion).^[106] Thomas' opinion was criticized by the 7-member majority of the Court, which wrote that by comparing physical assault to other prison conditions such as poor prison food, Thomas' opinion ignored "the concepts of dignity, civilized standards, humanity, and decency that animate the Eighth Amendment."^[105] According to historian David Garrow, Thomas's dissent in Hudson was a "classic call for federal judicial restraint, reminiscent of views that were held by Felix Frankfurter and John M. Harlan II a generation earlier, but editorial criticism rained down on him."^[107] Thomas would later respond to the accusation "that I supported the beating of prisoners in that case. Well, one must either be illiterate or fraught with malice to reach that conclusion....no honest reading can reach such a conclusion."^[107]

In Doggett v. United States, the defendant had been a fugitive since his indictment in 1980. After he was arrested in 1988, the Court held that the 8½ year delay between indictment and arrest violated Doggett's Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.^[108] Thomas dissented, arguing that the purpose of the Speedy Trial Clause was to prevent "'undue and oppressive incarceration' and the 'anxiety and concern accompanying public accusation'" and that the case implicated neither.^[108] He cast the case as instead "present[ing] the question [of] whether, independent of these core concerns, the Speedy Trial Clause protects an accused from two additional harms: (1) prejudice to his ability to defend himself caused by the passage of time; and (2) disruption of his life years after the alleged commission of his crime." Thomas dissented from the Court's decision to, as he saw it, answer the former in the affirmative.^[108] Thomas wrote that dismissing the conviction "invites the Nation's judges to indulge in ad hoc and result-driven second guessing of the government's investigatory efforts. Our Constitution neither contemplates nor tolerates such a role."^[109]

In United States v. Bajakajian, Thomas joined with the Court's more liberal bloc to write the majority opinion declaring a fine unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. The fine was for failing to declare over $300,000 in a suitcase on an international flight. Under a federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 982(a)(1), the passenger would have had to forfeit the entire amount. Thomas noted that the case required a distinction to be made between civil forfeiture and a fine exacted with the intention of punishing the respondent. He found that the forfeiture in this case was clearly intended as a punishment at least in part, was "grossly disproportional," and a violation of the Excessive Fines Clause.^[110]

Church and state

Law professor and former Thomas clerk John Yoo says Justice Thomas supports allowing religious groups more participation in public life.^[111] Thomas says the Establishment Clause ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion") "is best understood as a federalism provision –- it protects state establishments from federal interference but does not protect any individual right."^[112]

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow^[112] and Cutter v. Wilkinson,^[113] Thomas wrote that he supported incorporation of the Free Exercise Clause, which he says "clearly protects an individual right." He said that any law that would violate the Establishment Clause might also violate the Free Exercise Clause.

Thomas says "it makes little sense to incorporate the Establishment Clause" vis-à-vis the states by the Fourteenth Amendment.^[112] And in Cutter, he wrote: "The text and history of the Clause may well support the view that the Clause is not incorporated against the States precisely because the Clause shielded state establishments from congressional interference."

Equal protection

Thomas believes that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids any consideration of race, such as race-based affirmative action or preferential treatment. In Adarand Constructors v. Pena, for example, he wrote that "there is a 'moral [and] constitutional equivalence' between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality. Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law. That [affirmative action] programs may have been motivated, in part, by good intentions cannot provide refuge from the principle that under our Constitution, the government may not make distinctions on the basis of race."^[114]

In Gratz v. Bollinger, Thomas said that, in his view, "a State’s use of racial discrimination in higher education admissions is categorically prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause."^[115] In Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, Thomas joined the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts, who concluded that "[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."^[116] Concurring, Thomas wrote that "if our history has taught us anything, it has taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories," and charged that the dissent carried "similarities" to the arguments of the segregationist litigants in Brown v. Board of Education.^[116] And in Grutter v. Bollinger, he approvingly quoted Justice Harlan's Plessy v. Ferguson dissent: “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.”^[117]

Abortion

Justice Thomas supports ending constitutional protections for abortion.^[111] In Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. Thomas along with Justice Byron White joined the dissenting opinions of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia. Rehnquist wrote that "[w]e believe Roe was wrongly decided, and that it can and should be overruled consistently with our traditional approach to stare decisis in constitutional cases."^[118] Scalia's opinion concluded that the right to obtain an abortion is not "a liberty protected by the Constitution of the United States."^[118] "[T]he Constitution says absolutely nothing about it," Scalia wrote, "and [ ] the longstanding traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed."^[118]

In Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) the Court struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortion, concluding that it failed the "undue burden" test established in Casey. Thomas dissented, writing: "Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so."^[119] He went on to criticize the reasoning of the Casey and Stenberg majorities: "The majority’s insistence on a health exception is a fig leaf barely covering its hostility to any abortion regulation by the States -- a hostility that Casey purported to reject."

In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the Court rejected a facial challenge to a federal ban on partial-birth abortion.^[120] Concurring, Thomas asserted that the Court's abortion jurisprudence had no basis in the Constitution, but that the Court had accurately applied that jurisprudence in rejecting the challenge.^[120] Thomas added that the Court was not deciding the question of whether Congress had the power to outlaw partial birth abortions: [W]hether the Act constitutes a permissible exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause is not before the Court [in this case]....[T]he parties did not raise or brief that issue; it is outside the question presented; and the lower courts did not address it."^[120]

Judicial review

Justice Thomas is the justice most willing to exercise judicial review. According to a New York Times editorial, “from 1994 to 2005....Justice Thomas voted to overturn federal laws in 34 cases and Justice Scalia in 31, compared with just 15 for Justice Stephen Breyer."^[121]

In 2009's Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder, Thomas was the sole dissenter, voting in favor of throwing out Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Section 5 requires states with a history of racial voter discrimination—mostly states from the old South—to get Justice Department clearance when revising election procedures. Though Congress had reauthorized Section 5 in 2006 for another 25 years, Thomas said the law was no longer necessary, pointing out that the rate of black voting in seven Section 5 states was higher than the national average. Thomas said "the violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains."^[122]

Approach to oral arguments

Thomas is well-known for his reticence during the Court's oral arguments. In 2009, the New York Times noted that he had not asked a question from the bench in over 3 years.^[123] Thomas gave some reasons during a question-and-answer session with high school students in 2000:

I have some very active colleagues who like to ask questions. Usually, if you wait long enough, someone will ask your question. The other thing, I was on that other side of the podium before, in my earlier life, and it's hard to stand up by yourself and to have judges who are going to rule on your case ask you tough questions. I don't want to give them a hard time.

In November 2007, Thomas said to an audience at Hillsdale College in Michigan: "My colleagues should shut up!" He later explained, "I don't think that for judging, and for what we are doing, all those questions are necessary."^[124] Thomas is not the first quiet justice; in the 1970s and 1980s, justices such as William J. Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun were likewise generally quiet.^[125][126] However, Thomas' silence stood out on the Court of the 1990s, on which the other eight justices engaged in active questioning during oral arguments.^[126]

Thomas attributes his listening habit partly to his cultural environment; he spent his earliest years in the Gullah/Geechee cultural region of coastal Georgia and grew up speaking the Gullah language, a creole based on English and various West African languages.^[127] Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson says that Thomas "erased his accent long ago" and therefore this cannot be an explanation for his silence from the bench.^[128] CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin also questions Thomas's explanation, writing that Thomas knew how to speak English well from an early age, because he lived with his English-speaking grandfather from the age of six, attended only English-speaking parochial schools, and earned excellent school grades.^[129]

Public perception

Thomas has rarely given media interviews during his time on the Court. He said in 2007: "One of the reasons I don't do media interviews is, in the past, the media often has its own script."^[9] In 2007, Justice Thomas received a $1.5 million advance for writing his memoir, My Grandfather's Son.^[24] It became a bestseller.^[130]

Writings

• Thomas, Clarence (2007). My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir, Harper, ISBN 0-06-056555-1.
• Thomas, Clarence. "Why Federalism Matters," Drake Law Review, Volume 48, Issue 2, page 234 (2000).

See also

Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by court composition List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by education List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States by time in office List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

List of United States Chief Justices by time in office List of Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States List of Roman Catholic United States Supreme Court justices. United States Supreme Court cases during the Rehnquist Court United States Supreme Court cases during the Roberts Court

Footnotes and references

1. ^ "Federal Judicial Center: Clarence Thomas". 2009-12-12. http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=2362. Retrieved 2009-12-12. 
2. ^ Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Biography, Clarence Thomas
3. ^ Clarence Thomas bio from Notable Names Database
4. ^ www.BlackPast.org, Online Reference Guide to African American History
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} Oyez, The Oyez Project Supreme Court media, Clarence Thomas biography (2003).
6. ^ ^{a b} Brady, Diane (2007-03-12). "The Holy Cross Fraternity". BusinessWeek. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_11/b4025079.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
7. ^ ^{a b c} Merida, Kevin; Fletcher, Michael A. (August 4, 2002), "Supreme Discomfort", Washington Post Magazine: W08 
8. ^ ^{a b c d e} Dolin, Monica (2007-10-03). "Anger Still Fresh in Clarence Thomas' Memoir". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=3682886&page=1. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
9. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Brady, Diane. "Clarence Thomas Speaks Out", BusinessWeek (2007-03-12).
10. ^ ^{a b} Margolick, David (1991-07-03). "Judge Portrayed as a Product Of Ideals Clashing With Life". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE4DE143FF930A35754C0A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
11. ^ Weeks, Linton (2007-02-21). "Ted Wells, Center Of the Defense". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001858_pf.html. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
12. ^ Simon, Martin (September 16, 1991). "Supreme Mystery". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/126939/. Retrieved April 13, 2009. 
13. ^ ^{a b} Kroft, Steve, (Sept. 30, 2007) Clarence Thomas: The Justice Nobody Knows -- Supreme Court Justice Gives First Television Interview To 60 Minutes.
14. ^ "Talk Radio Online::Radio Show". Townhall.com. http://www.townhall.com/TalkRadio/Show.aspx?RadioShowID=3&ContentGuid=8b54ead4-9c5c-4dff-acba-aedc11a408db. Retrieved 2009-12-06. 
15. ^ Lithwick, Dahlia. "From Clarence Thomas to Palin" (Opinion Column), Newsweek (2008-09-27).
16. ^ Tumulty, Karen (1991-07-07). "Court Path Started in the Ashes: A fire launched Clarence Thomas on a path toward fierce personal drive-but not before the Supreme Court nominee journeyed through anger, self-hatred, confusion and doubt.". Los Angeles Times. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/61349985.html?dids=61349985:61349985&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+07%2C+1991&author=KAREN+TUMULTY&pub=Los+Angeles+Times+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&desc=COLUMN+ONE+Court+Path+Started+in+the+Ashes+A+fire+launched+Clarence+Thomas+on+a+path+toward+fierce+personal+drive-but+not+before+the+Supreme+Court+nominee+journeyed+through+anger%2C+self-hatred%2C+confusion+and+doubt.&pqatl=google. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
17. ^ Bidinotto, Robert James,Celebrity "Rand Fans" — Clarence Thomas,, The Atlas Society.
18. ^ ^{a b} Greenburg, Jan Crawford (2007-09-30). "Clarence Thomas: A Silent Justice Speaks Out: Part VII: 'Traitorous' Adversaries: Anita Hill and the Senate Democrats". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3665221&page=1. Retrieved 2008-10-18. 
19. ^ Merida, Kevin; Michael A. Fletcher (April 22, 2007). "Justice Thomas's Life A Tangle of Poverty, Privilege and Race". Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/21/AR2007042101475.html. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
20. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey (2007). The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Random House. ISBN 978-0-385-51640-2. 
21. ^ "Justice Thomas marches to own tune," Associated Press via USA Today (2001-09-03).
22. ^ "Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: Did Clarence Thomas just say he's not Catholic?". Insightscoop.typepad.com. 2007-10-01. http://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2007/10/did-clarence-th.html. Retrieved 2009-12-06. 
23. ^ "The religion of Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice". Adherents.com. http://www.adherents.com/people/pt/Clarence_Thomas.html. Retrieved 2009-12-06. 
24. ^ ^{a b} Robert Barnes, Michael A. Fletcher and Kevin Merida (2007-09-29). "Justice Thomas Lashes Out in Memoir". The Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/28/AR2007092801634.html. Retrieved 2008-10-20. 
25. ^ Religious affiliation of Supreme Court justices Justice Sherman Minton converted to Catholicism after his retirement. James F. Byrnes was raised as Catholic, but converted to Episcopalianism before his confirmation as a Supreme Court Justice.
26. ^ Brozan, Nadine (May 30, 1994). "Wedding Announcements". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/30/nyregion/chronicle-248584.html. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
27. ^ Thomas, Evan (July 15, 1991). "Where Does He Stand?". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/128254/. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
28. ^ Williams, Juan (October 25, 1984). "EEOC Chairman Blasts Black Leaders". Washington Post. http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/125860002.html?dids=125860002:125860002&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&date=Oct+25%2C+1984&author=By+Juan+Williams+Washington+Post+Staff+Writer&pub=The+Washington+Post++(1974-Current+file)&edition=&startpage=A7&desc=EEOC+Chairman+Blasts+Black+Leaders. Retrieved April 20, 2009. "The chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says that black leaders are 'watching the destruction of our race' as they 'bitch, bitch, bitch' about President Reagan but fail to work with the administration to solve problems. Clarence Thomas said in an interview that, in his 3 1/2 years on the job, no major black leader has sought his help in influencing the Reagan administration. Black spokesmen should be working with the administration to solve such problems as teen-age pregnancy, unemployment or illiteracy instead of working against Reagan, Thomas said." 
29. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Greenburg, Jan Crawford (2007-09-30). "Clarence Thomas: A Silent Justice Speaks Out". ABC News. http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3664944&page=1. Retrieved 2008-10-18. 
30. ^ The Library of Congress Presidential Nominations, Look up of Nomination: PN838-101. February 06, 1990 - Committee on Judiciary, hearings held. February 22, 1990 - Committee on Judiciary, ordered to be reported favorably, placed on Senate Executive Calendar. March 06, 1990 - floor action, confirmed by the Senate by voice vote.
31. ^ Federal Judicial Center
32. ^ Jefferson, Margo. “BOOKS OF THE TIMES; The Thomas-Hill Question, Answered Anew,” New York Times (1994-11-11).
33. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 21 (New York: Random House 2007). ISBN 9780739354599.
34. ^ Dowd, Maureen. “The Supreme Court; Conservative Black Judge, Clarence Thomas, Is Named to Marshall’s Court Seat,” New York Times (1991-07-02).
35. ^ ^{a b} Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 30 (Random House 2007).
36. ^ ^{a b} Merida, Kevin and Fletcher, Michael. Supreme Discomfort, page 398 (Random House 2008).
37. ^ Hall, Kermit and McGuire, Kevin. The Judicial Branch, page 155 (Oxford University Press 2006).
38. ^ ^{a b c d} Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 31 (Random House 2007).
39. ^ "Supreme Court Justices Without Prior Judicial Experience Before Becoming Justices," Findlaw (c. 2009).
40. ^ Yarbrough, Tinsley (2005). David Hackett Souter: Traditional Republican on the Rehnquist Court. Oxford University Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=mvV0cVeWVmUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=david+souter+%22home+run%22&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0. Retrieved 2008-06-27. 
41. ^ It is routine for nominees, at all levels of the Federal judiciary, to refuse to discuss cases during their confirmation hearings that might come before them if they are confirmed. Clinton appointed Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, who both refused to discuss Roe before the Judiciary Committee, even though Ginsburg has worked for years for the ACLU defending it. Despite this nearly universal refusal of nominees to discuss hot button issues such as Roe, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee nearly always try to draw the nominee's view out during confirmation hearings.
42. ^ "The Borking Begins; Linda Chavez's mistake was she took a less fortunate person into her home" (Editorial), Wall Street Journal (2001-01-08).
43. ^ Tushnet, Mark. A Court Divided, page 335 (Norton & Company 2005).
44. ^ ^{a b c} Mayer, Jane; Jill Abramson (1994). Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0-452-27499-0. 
45. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 25 (Random House 2007).
46. ^ Woodward, Kenneth (September 23, 1991). "Natural Law, An Elusive Tradition". Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/126976/. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
47. ^ Epstein, Aaron (August 30, 1991). "The Natural Law According To Clarence Thomas". Seattle Times. http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19910830&slug=1302739. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
48. ^ “THE THOMAS NOMINATION; Excerpts From Senate's Hearings on the Thomas Nomination,” New York Times (1991-10-12): “SPECTER: So that you are not now drawing a conclusion that Judge Thomas sexually harassed you? MS. HILL: Yes, I am drawing that conclusion.”
49. ^ In particular, the questioning by Senator Specter was intense. See Morrison, Toni. “Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power,” page 55 (Pantheon Books 1992). After the questioning, Specter said that, "the testimony of Professor Hill in the morning was flat out perjury", and that "she specifically changed it in the afternoon when confronted with the possibility of being contradicted." See transcript, page 230.
50. ^ Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library, October 11, 1991.
51. ^ "The Thomas Nomination; On the Hearing Schedule: Eight Further Witnesses," The New York Times (1991-10-13)
52. ^ See hearing record from October 13, 1991. Senator Biden wrote to Wright: "I wish to make clear, however, that if you want to testify at the hearing in person, I will honor that request." Wright responded to Biden: "I agree the admission of the transcript of my interview and that of Miss Jourdain's in the record without rebuttal at the hearing represents my position and is completely satisfactory to me."
53. ^ "United States Senate, Transcript of Proceedings" (PDF). gpoaccess.gov. 1991-10-10. pp. 442–511. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh102-1084pt4/442-511.pdf. Retrieved 2008-09-18. 
54. ^ Marcus, Ruth. "One Angry Man, Clarence Thomas Is No Victim" (Opinion Column) Washington Post (2007-10-30).
55. ^ Press Release, FAIR's Reply to Limbaugh's Non-Response (10/17/94) Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
56. ^ "Nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States," Senate Hearing 102-1084, pt. 4, page 590. (See table of contents for hearing, here [1].)
57. ^ “THE THOMAS NOMINATION; Questions to Those Who Corroborated Hill Account,” New York Times (1991-10-21).
58. ^ Hall, Kermit (ed), The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, page 871, Oxford Press, 1992 ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.
59. ^ Vanzo, John (October 12, 2007). "Clarence Thomas". Georgia Encyclopedia. http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2840&pid=s-58. Retrieved July 20, 2009. 
60. ^ Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, pp. 112-113 (Penguin Group 2007). ISBN 9781594201011
61. ^ ^{a b} Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, pp. 115-116 (Penguin Group 2007).
62. ^ Greenburg, Jan Crawford (2007-01-28). "The Truth About Clarence Thomas". The Wall Street Journal. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009590. Retrieved 2008-10-19. 
63. ^ Supreme Court Watch, Profile: Justice Clarence Thomas Public Broadcasting Service.
64. ^ Cohen, Adam, Editorial Observer (June 3, 2007) New York Times.
65. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 116 (Random House 2007).
66. ^ Lazarus, Edward. “BOOK REVIEW - It seems Justice Thomas is still seeking confirmation - My Grandfather's Son A Memoir Clarence Thomas,” Los Angeles Times (2007-10-01).
67. ^ Marshall, Thomas. Public Opinion and the Rehnquist Court, page 79 (SUNY Press, 2008).
68. ^ Von Drehle, David. "Executive Branch Reined In", Washington Post (2004-06-29).
69. ^ West, Paul. A president under siege throws down the gauntlet,” Hartford Courant (2005-11-01).
70. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey (2007). The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Random House. p. 103. ISBN 978-0-385-51640-2. 
71. ^ Kauffman B., "Clarence Thomas", Reason Magazine, November 1987, Accessed May 7, 2007.
72. ^ ^{a b c} “Nine Justices, Ten Years: A Statistical Retrospective,” Harvard Law Review, volume 118, page 510, 519 (2004).
73. ^ Baude, Will. Brothers in Law, The New Republic Online, (2004-06-30): "Justices Souter and Ginsburg were in complete agreement in 85 percent of the Court’s decisions. Chief Justice Rehnquist agreed with Justice O’Connor in 79 percent and Justice Kennedy in 77 percent. Justices Stevens and Souter agreed 77 percent of the time; so did Justices Ginsburg and Breyer. Thomas and Scalia agreed in only 73 percent of the cases. Thomas regularly breaks with Scalia, disagreeing on points of doctrine, finding a more measured and judicial tone, and calling for the elimination of bad law. Unless he is simply a very bad yes-man, Clarence Thomas is a more independent voice than most people give him credit for."
74. ^ Greenhouse, Linda. "In Steps Big and Small, Supreme Court, Moved Right", The New York Times, July 1, 2007.
75. ^ “SCOTUSblog Agreement Stats for OT06 … Non-Unanimous Cases”
76. ^ “SCOTUSblog Agreement Stats for OT06….”
77. ^ Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, p. 166 (Penguin Group 2007).
78. ^ Mark Tushnet, A Court Divided 85-6 (2006); Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine 119 (2008).
79. ^ “The Statistics,” Harvard Law Review, volume 121, page 439 (2007).
80. ^ “The Statistics,” Harvard Law Review, volume 120, page 372 (2006).
81. ^ “The Statistics,” Harvard Law Review, volume 119, page 415 (2005).
82. ^ Gerhardt, Michael. The Power of Precedent, page 188 (Oxford University Press 2008): Thomas "does not, at least statistically, urge more than three overrulings per term, thus indicating his willingness to leave a fairly broad spectrum of constitutional decisions intact".
83. ^ Barrett, Amy. “Statutory Stare Decisis in the Courts of Appeals,” George Washington Law Review (2005).
84. ^ "A Big Question About Clarence Thomas", The Washington Post, October 14, 2004. Accessed May 7, 2007.
85. ^ ^{a b} Gerhardt, Michael. The Power of Precedent, pages 249 (ranked eleventh for overturning precedent) and 12 (most frequently urged overturning) (Oxford University Press 2008).
86. ^ Ringel, Jonathan. “The Bombshell in the Clarence Thomas Biography”, Daily Report bvia Law.com (2004-08-05). Scalia also said that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period."
87. ^ ^{a b} Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 120 (Random House 2007).
88. ^ E.g., Seminole Tribe v. Florida 517 U.S. 44 (1996). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
89. ^ United Haulers Assn. v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Mgmt. Auth. 550 U.S. 330 (2007). Full text opinion courtesy of Cornell University
90. ^ United States v. Lopez 514 U.S. 549 (1995). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
91. ^ ^{a b} Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine. Page 100.
92. ^ Dorf, Michael. “What California’s Trans Fat Ban Teaches Us About Federalism,” Findlaw’s Writ (2008-07-29): “Proponents of broad national power like myself do not say that the Court should update the Constitution to keep it in tune with the times. Rather, we argue —- or at least some of us argue —- that the growth of a national, indeed, global, economy, means that activities that might have been carried out in relatively discrete local markets in 1789 are now undoubtedly part of interstate and international commerce.”
93. ^ ^{a b} Joondeph, Bradley “Federalism, the Rehnquist Court, and the Modern Republican Party,” Oregon Law Review, Volume 87 (2008): "Most scholars agree that federalism was central to the Rehnquist Court’s constitutional agenda."
94. ^ Althouse, Ann. “Why Talking About States' Rights Cannot Avoid the Need for Normative Federalism Analysis: A Response to Professors Baker and Young,” Duke Law Journal, Volume 51, page 363 (2001).
95. ^ ^{a b} Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, p. 117 (Penguin Group 2007).
96. ^ ^{a b} Foucha v. Louisiana, 504 U.S. 71 (1992). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
97. ^ Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
98. ^ Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, 548 U.S. 557 (2006).
99. ^ Volokh, Eugene. "How the Justices Voted in Free Speech Cases, 1994-2000" (Updated), 48 UCLA L. Rev. 1191 (2001).
100. ^ Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393 (2007). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
101. ^ American Civil Liberties Union v. Ashcroft, 535 U.S. 564 (2002), full text courtesy of Findlaw.
102. ^ Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32 (2000). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
103. ^ ^{a b c} Safford Unified School District v. Redding, 557 U. S. __ (2009). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
104. ^ “Court Says Strip Search of Ariz. Teenager Illegal,” Associated Press via NPR (2009-06-25).
105. ^ ^{a b c} Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992).
106. ^ Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, p. 119 (Penguin Group 2007).
107. ^ ^{a b} Garrow, David. "Saving Thomas", The New Republic (2004-10-25).
108. ^ ^{a b c} Doggett v. United States, 505 U.S. 647 (1992). Full text of opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
109. ^ Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court, p. 123 (Penguin Group 2007).
110. ^ United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1998).
111. ^ ^{a b} Yoo, John, Opinion (October 9, 2007) The Real Clarence Thomas Wall Street Journal.
112. ^ ^{a b c} Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). Thomas wrote: "It may well be the case that anything that would violate the incorporated Establishment Clause would actually violate the Free Exercise Clause, further calling into doubt the utility of incorporating the Establishment Clause."
113. ^ Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709 (2005). Thomas wrote: "I note, however, that a state law that would violate the incorporated Establishment Clause might also violate the Free Exercise Clause."
114. ^ Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200 (1995).
115. ^ Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003).
116. ^ ^{a b} Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007).
117. ^ Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003).
118. ^ ^{a b c} Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).
119. ^ Stenberg v. Carhart, 530 U.S. 914 (2000).
120. ^ ^{a b c} Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007).
121. ^ “Activism Is in the Eye of the Ideologist” (Editorial), New York Times (2006-09-11).
122. ^ Opinion of Thomas, J. NORTHWEST AUSTIN MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT NUMBER ONE v. ERIC H. HOLDER, Jr., ATTORNEY GENERAL (June 22, 2009) Full text courtesy of Cornell University Law School.
123. ^ Liptak, Adam. "A Reticent Justice Opens Up to a Group of Students," New York Times (2009-04-13).
124. ^ Bedard, Paul. "This Is Not Perry Mason," Washington Whispers, U.S. News & World Report (2007-11-29).
125. ^ Garrow, David. "The Rehnquist Reins", New York Times Magazine (1996-10-06).
126. ^ ^{a b} Toobin, Jeffrey (2007). The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Random House. pp. 106–107. ISBN 978-0-385-51640-2. 
127. ^ "The 43rd President; In His Own Words," The New York Times (2000-12-14).
128. ^ Patterson, Orlando. Thomas Agonistes (June 17, 2007). New York Times book review.
129. ^ Toobin, Jeffrey. The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, p. 106 (Random House 2007).
130. ^ Garner, Dwight. “TBR; TBR: Inside the List,” New York Times (2007-10-21).

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J., Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court. 3d. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-506557-3.
• Brooks, Roy L. (2008) Structures of Judicial Decision Making from Legal Formalism to Critical Theory 2nd Ed., (Durham, N.C., (Carolina Academic Press), 308 pp. ISBN 1-59460-123-2; ISBN 978-1-59460-123-1.
• Carp, Dylan (1998, September). Out of Scalia's Shadow. Liberty.
• Cushman, Clare, The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies,1789-1995 (2nd ed.) (Supreme Court Historical Society), (Congressional Quarterly Books, 2001) ISBN 1568021267; ISBN 9781568021263.
• Foskett, Ken (2004). Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas, William Morrow, ISBN 0-06-052721-8
• Frank, John P., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions (Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors) (Chelsea House Publishers, 1995) ISBN 0791013774, ISBN 978-0791013779.
• Gerber, Scott D. First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas (January, 1999) New York University Press 281 pages, January 1999 ISBN 081473099X
• Greenburg, Jan Crawford. Supreme Conflict (January, 2007). Penguin Group (USA) ISBN 9781594201011 368 pp.
• Hall, Kermit L., ed. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0195058356; ISBN 9780195058352.
• Holzer, Henry Mark. Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas 1991-2006: A Conservative's Perspective (Hardcover) 332 pages Booklocker.com (February 28, 2006) ISBN 1591139112; ISBN 978-1591139119.
• Lazarus, Edward (2005, Jan. 6). Will Clarence Thomas Be the Court's Next Chief Justice? FindLaw.
• Mayer, Jane, and Jill Abramson (1994). Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, Houghton Mifflin Company, ISBN 0-452-27499-0
• Martin, Fenton S. and Goehlert, Robert U., The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography, (Congressional Quarterly Books, 1990). ISBN 0871875543.
• Onwuachi-Willig, Angela (2005). Just Another Brother on the SCT?: What Justice Clarence Thomas Teaches Us About the Influence of Racial Identity. Iowa Law Review, 90.
• Presser, Stephen B. (2005, Jan.-Feb.) Touting Thomas: The Truth about America's Most Maligned Justice. Legal Affairs.
• Shils, Edward and Rheinstein, Max. (1964) Max Weber Law in Economy and Society, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) ISBN 0-674-55651-8; ISBN 0674556518; ISBN 9780674556515.
• Thomas, Andrew Peyton (2001). Clarence Thomas: A Biography, Encounter Books, ISBN 1-893554-36-8
• Urofsky, Melvin I., The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary (New York: Garland Publishing 1994). 590 pp. ISBN 0815311761; ISBN 978-0815311768.
• Woodward, Robert; Armstrong, Scott (1979). The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 9780380521838; ISBN 0380521830. ISBN 9780671241100; ISBN 0671241109; ISBN 0743274024; ISBN 9780743274029.. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Clarence Thomas

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Clarence Thomas

• About.com Quinn, Justin, A Profile of Clarence Thomas U.S. Conservative Politics.
• Clarence Thomas at the 2007 Annual National Lawyers Convention - November 2007.
• Cornell Law School Biography of Clarence Thomas.
• Michael Ariens, Clarence Thomas.
• Outline of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas Controversy
• Overview of Personal Memoir
• Oyez, Official Supreme Court media, Clarence Thomas biography.
• Supreme Court official biography (PDF format
• How to Read the Constitution Excerpt from Thomas's Walter B. Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute in October 2008
• Transcripts of Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court
• Washington Post article about Thomas
• Coverage of Clarence Thomas from the New York Times

Legal offices
Preceded by Robert Bork	Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit 1990-1991	Succeeded by Judith Ann Wilson Rogers
Preceded by Thurgood Marshall	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1991-present	Succeeded by Incumbent
United States order of precedence
Preceded by Anthony Kennedy Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States	United States order of precedence Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States	Succeeded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

v • d • e Judicial opinions of Clarence Thomas U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (March 6, 1990 – October 17, 1991); by calendar year 1990 • 1991 Supreme Court of the United States (October 18, 1991 – present); by term 1991 • 1992 • 1993 • 1994 • 1995 • 1996 • 1997 • 1998 • 1999 • 2000 • 2001 • 2002 • 2003 • 2004 • 2005 • 2006 • 2007 • 2008 • 2009

Supreme Court of the United States

The Rehnquist Court Chief Justice: William Hubbs Rehnquist (1986–2005) 1991–1993: B. White | H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas 1993–1994: H. Blackmun | J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg 1994–2005: J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer The Roberts Court Chief Justice: John Glover Roberts, Jr. (2005-present) 2005–2006: J.P. Stevens | S.D. O'Connor | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer 2006–2009: J.P. Stevens | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer | S. Alito 2009–present: J.P. Stevens | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer | S. Alito | S. Sotomayor

Persondata
NAME	Thomas, Clarence
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American jurist and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
DATE OF BIRTH	June 23, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH	Pin Point, Georgia
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

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