Jeffrey Toobin on Clarence Thomas in the New Yorker

Yes. Brings up a good point that Biden didn't call up other witnesses who corroborate Hill's testimony.

 

Because there is NO WAY he could control his sexual urges...

 

Not with a seductive fox like Anita Hill present all the time -- she should really apologize. #GinnyThomas

 

IMHO Thomas is no way a most persuasive, intellectual thinker who by the force of his powers has swayed the Court to his views. That is a simplistic view of the events.

Thomas' most visible imprint on the Court has been his utter refusal to participate in oral argument. To simply ignore an integral part of the procedures of an institution that has stood for over 115 years is simply wrong. Oral argument is a vital part of the history of our country. The opportunity to be heard, in an open forum, in front of the general public is in many ways the essence of the United States (nee Star Chamber), yet Thomas insists on non participation. Ridiculous.

From my legal studies and vantage point, Thomas is the worst justice in my lifetime.

 

I can only imagine what will happen if/when a Democratic president tries to replace a Republican appointee with someone at the other end of the spectrum as HW did when he appointed Thomas to replace Marshall.
I know it will never happen, probably because there isn't a Dem judge sitting today as far to the left as the current majority is to the right.
The Honorable Justice Tammy Baldwin?

 

Odd that Amar would compare Thomas to Hugo Black. And Scalia is every bit as conservative as Thomas so I doubt Thomas is the most conservative justice since the 1930s.

 

I don't think there's any doubt Thomas is the most conservative justice since the '30s. Scalia is conservative, yes, but Thomas is even more conservative. (Read some of his opinions on cruel and unusual punishment sometime. Or his recent dissent -- from Scalia's opinion -- in the First Amendment video game case.) And Thomas is certainly more committed to his version of originalism. While Scalia is pragmatic enough to go along with the others from time to time, even if he finds it distasteful, Thomas is much more likely to write a dissent or concur in the judgment only. While lone dissenters can sometimes plant seeds for future shifts in jurisprudence -- something Rehnquist did, and Scalia has done quite a bit of -- I tend to agree with those who think the current court's shift to the right has more to do with who's been in the White House than Thomas. But I do think Thomas might deserve a little of the credit (or blame, depending on your perspective) for who's been in the White House, because I think having him stake out those extreme positions on the bench over the last 20 years has probably emboldened Republican politicians to move to the right and given them a legal fig leaf to justify doing so.

With all that said, I cringe a little when I read comments like qtlaw's, calling Thomas the worst justice of our lifetimes. A bad justice is someone like Charles Evans Whittaker, who couldn't do the job. (If I remember correctly, Whittaker once couldn't write an opinion that had been assigned to him, so William O. Douglas -- who was writing a dissent -- wrote the opinion for him.) Thomas isn't going to go down as one of the greatest legal minds to ever serve on the Court, and I don't know that he's written any truly historic or significant opinions. But even if he's got the worst legal mind on the Court, that doesn't mean he's got a bad legal mind, or that he's unqualified for the job, as always seems to be suggested in discussions about him. I also think too much is made of his silence during oral argument. It's unusual, yes, but he's not denying the parties an opportunity to be heard. If anyone's doing that, it's the other eight justices, who ask more than enough questions.

 

He also left the Supreme Court in 1962, which isn't included in the lifetimes of many of us.

 

Right. I wasn't trying to compare them and say that Whittaker was worse than Thomas. My point was that Whittaker was the type of Justice deserving of a title like "Worst Justice of our lifetime," because he simply couldn't handle the job. While I disagree with Thomas on most everything, I can't say he's incapable of doing his job.

But I'll concede that someone has to be the worst justice of our lifetime -- just as someone is the worst winner of the Nobel Prize for physics in the last 30 years. If people think it's Thomas, fine; I just think such a title maybe isn't nuanced enough.

 

Fair enough. But then that also suggests that there is currently a justice incapable of doing his or her job. Evidence of that being lacking, the "worst justice of our lifetime" tag for this lifetime can be determined by other factors.

Point being, "worst justice of our lifetime" is a relative term, unlike, say, "simply couldn't handle the job."

 

Chauncey Gardner?

 

"I like to watch"