Clarence Thomas

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Clarence Thomas
Clearence Thomas
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Incumbent
Assumed office  October 19, 1991
Nominated by	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Thurgood Marshall
Born	June 23, 1948 (1948-06-23) (age 59) Pin Point, Georgia
Spouse	Kate Ambush Thomas (div.) Virginia Lamp Thomas
Alma mater	College of the Holy Cross Yale University
Religion	Roman Catholic

Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist and has been an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. He is the second African American to serve on the nation's highest court, after Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thomas's career in the Supreme Court has seen him take a conservative approach to cases while adhering to the postulates of originalism.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Career 2.1 Early career 2.2 Supreme Court appointment 2.2.1 Allegations of sexual harassment 3 Judicial philosophy 3.1 Commerce Clause and states' rights 3.2 Capital punishment 3.3 Fourth Amendment 3.4 Free speech 3.5 Executive power 4 Approach to oral arguments 5 Bibliography 6 References 7 Sources 8 External links

[edit] Personal life

Clarence Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia in a small community outside Savannah. His father left his family when he was only two years old,^[1] leaving his mother Leola Anderson to take care of the family. When Thomas was seven they went to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, in Savannah. He had a fuel oil business that also sold ice; Thomas often helped him make deliveries.

His grandfather believed in hard work and self-reliance and would counsel him to "never let the sun catch you in bed in the morning." In 1975, when Thomas read Race and Economics by economist Thomas Sowell, he found an intellectual foundation for this philosophy.^[1] 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's bestselling book The Fountainhead, and would later require his staffers to watch the 1949 film version. The plot describes an architect's struggle to maintain his integrity against the forces of conformity, something Thomas could relate to his own career in the U.S. government.^[1] Raised Roman Catholic (he later attended an Episcopal church with his wife, but returned to the Catholic Church in the late 1990s), Thomas considered entering the priesthood, attending St. John Vianney's Minor Seminary on the Isle of Hope near Savannah and, briefly, Conception Seminary College, a Roman Catholic seminary in Missouri. Thomas told interviewers that he left the seminary (and the call for priesthood) after overhearing a student say, in response to the news that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot, "Good, I hope the SOB dies."

In 1968, Clarence Thomas responded to a minority recruitment program and enrolled in the College of the Holy Cross, a Roman Catholic school in Worcester, Massachusetts.^{[citation needed]} There he helped found the Black Student Union and graduated in 1971 with an A.B., cum laude in English. He then attended Yale Law School from which he received a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1974. To Dennis Prager, Judge Thomas has stated his opinion that, in his early career, his Yale law degree was not taken seriously by law firms to which he applied, who assumed that it was obtained because of affirmative action policies. [1]

Thomas has one child, Jamal Adeen, from his first marriage. This marriage, to Kathy Grace Ambush, lasted from 1971 until their 1984 divorce. Thomas married Virginia Lamp in 1987. He went on to attend Randolph-Macon Academy.^[2]

Since joining the Supreme Court, Thomas requested an annulment of his first marriage from the Roman Catholic Church, which was granted by the Tribunal of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Arlington. He was reconciled to the Church in the mid-1990s and remains a practicing Roman Catholic.

In 1994, Thomas performed, at his home, the wedding ceremony for radio host Rush Limbaugh's third marriage, to Marta Fitzgerald.^[3]

As his wife grew up in Nebraska and attended college at the University of Nebraska, Thomas is an avid Nebraska Cornhuskers fan who attends Husker football games, and in 2007 met with the 2006 National Championship Husker Volleyball team, telling them he bled Husker red.^[4][5]

[edit] Career

[edit] Early career

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 1989, Thomas left to become an attorney with Monsanto in St. Louis, Missouri. He 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 Thomas was Roman Catholic and Danforth was ordained Episcopalian). Danforth was to be instrumental in championing Thomas for the Supreme Court.

In 1981, he began his rise through the Reagan administration. From 1981 to 1982, he served as Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education ("ED"), and as Chairman of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") from 1982 to 1990.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush appointed Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

[edit] Supreme Court appointment

Main article: Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination

On July 2, 1991 President George H.W. Bush nominated Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall who had recently announced his retirement.^[6] Marshall had been the only African American justice on the court. The selection of Thomas preserved the existing racial balance of the court, but it was seen as likely to move the ideological balance to the right.

American Bar Association's (ABA) rating for Judge Thomas was split between "qualified" and "not qualified."

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. Under questioning during confirmation hearings, Thomas repeatedly asserted that he had not formulated a position on the Roe decision.^[7]

Some of the public statements of Thomas's opponents foreshadowed the confirmation fight that would occur. One such statement came from activist Florence Kennedy at a July 1991 conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City. Making reference to the failure of Robert Bork's nomination, she said of Thomas, "We're going to 'bork' him."^[8]

The term has since become a part of the American political lexicon. Liberals have generally used the term to mean defeating conservative nominees for allegedly being "out of the judicial mainstream"; conservatives, conversely, use it to describe what they consider unscrupulous tactics to derail the nominations of nominees unacceptable to left-leaning interest groups.

[edit] Allegations of sexual harassment

Toward the end of the confirmation hearings, information was leaked to the press from an FBI interview with Anita Hill, an attorney who had worked for Thomas at the DOE and the EEOC. NPR's Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg reported that Hill, who was now a University of Oklahoma law school professor, had accused him of sexually harassing her.^{[citation needed]} On October 11, 1991, Hill was called to testify during the Senate confirmation hearing.

Hill said: "He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes....On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess....Thomas was drinking a Coke in his office, he got up from the table at which we were working, went over to his desk to get the Coke, looked at the can and asked, 'Who has put pipi hair on my Coke?'."^[9] Hill also indicated that Thomas made reference to the pornographic actor Long Dong Silver.

Angela Wright, who worked with Thomas at the EEOC, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Thomas had repeatedly made comments to her, much like those he allegedly made to Hill, including pressuring her for dates and commenting on her body. Rose Jourdain testified that Wright had discussed Thomas' behavior with her at the time it occurred, and that she had considered it sexual harassment. In light of the fact that Thomas had testified that he had fired Wright for calling another employee a 'faggot,' ^[10] Sen. Joseph Biden, chair of the Judiciary Committee, decided against publicly hearing Wright's testimony.

Another former Thomas assistant, Sukari Hardnett, made further damaging charges against him. Although Hardnett made it clear she was not accusing Thomas of sexual harassment, she provided the Judiciary Committee with sworn testimony that "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." Additionally, Ellen Wells, John W. Carr, Judge Susan Hoerchner, and Joel Paul testified that Hill had discussed Thomas' actions at the time she worked for Thomas, and that she had characterized them as sexual harassment.^[11]

Thomas denied all allegations of sexual harassment and sexual impropriety, by Hill and the others. Of the Committee's investigation of the accusations, Thomas said: "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 [sic] 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."^[12]

After extensive debate, the Committee sent the nomination to the full Senate without a recommendation either way. Thomas was confirmed by the Senate with a 52-48 vote on October 15, 1991, the narrowest margin for approval in more than a century.^[13] The final floor vote was not along strictly party lines: 41 Republicans and 11 Democrats voted to confirm while 46 Democrats and 2 Republicans (Jim Jeffords (R-VT) and Bob Packwood^[14] (R-OR)) voted to reject the nomination.

On October 23, 1991 Thomas took his seat as the 106th Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

[edit] Judicial philosophy

Clarence Thomas is a conservative who admits to having some "libertarian leanings."^[15] Thomas is often described as an originalist. Although he has been compared to Antonin Scalia, he is less devoted to precedent than Scalia, who told Thomas' biographer that Thomas "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period. If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right."^[16] In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow and Cutter v. Wilkinson, Thomas argued that the Establishment Clause was not incorporated to states by the Fourteenth Amendment, directly challenging the precedent Everson v. Board of Education. He has advocated the reversal of Roe v. Wade, joining the dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and writing the concurrence in Gonzales v. Carhart. Justice Thomas' judicial philosophy is most similar to Justice Scalia's. He voted with Scalia 91% of the time during the court's '06-'07 session. ^[17] He voted with Justice John Paul Stevens the least, only 36% of the time. ^[18]

[edit] Commerce Clause and states' rights

Thomas consistently supports a strict interpretation of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause and supports limits on the power of federal government in favor of states' rights. In both United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison Thomas wrote a separate concurring opinion arguing for the original meaning of the commerce clause and criticizing the substantial effects formula. He wrote a sharply worded dissent in Gonzales v. Raich, a decision that permitted federal government to arrest, prosecute, and imprison patients who were using medical marijuana. However, he previously authored United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, an earlier case that also permitted the federal government to inspect medical marijuana dispensaries (the Oakland case dealt with the issue of medical necessity rather than federalism). In his Gonzales v. Carhart concurrence, he intimated that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act might have been beyond Congress' authority to enact under the commerce clause.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Capital punishment

Like Justice Scalia, Thomas takes a narrow view of the substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution on the use of capital punishment; he was among the dissenters in both Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, which held that the Constitution prohibited 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).

[edit] Fourth Amendment

In the cases regarding the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, Thomas often favors law enforcement over defendants, although not always—he was in the majority in Kyllo v. United States and wrote separately in Indianapolis v. Edmond the opinion that the Constitution does not allow random stops of drivers. His opinion for the court in Board of Education v. Earls upheld drug testing for students involved in extracurricular activities, and 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.

[edit] Free speech

Among Supreme Court Justices, Thomas is typically the second most likely to uphold free speech claims.^[19] 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 disagrees with free speech claimants. For example, he dissented in Virginia v. Black, a case that struck down a Virginia statute that banned cross-burning, and authored ACLU v. Ashcroft, upholding the Child Online Protection Act. In addition, Thomas does not believe that students possess any right to free speech in public schools, a view he expressed in his concurrence in Morse v. Frederick. In that case, he argued that the precedent of Tinker v. Des Moines should be overruled.

[edit] Executive power

Thomas has a favorable view toward the power of the executive branch. He was the only justice that agreed with all arguments of the Bush administration in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld. He also dissented in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which held that military commissions set up by the Bush administration to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay "violate both the UCMJ and the four Geneva Conventions...."^[20]

[edit] Approach to oral arguments

Thomas is well-known for listening rather than actively asking questions during oral arguments of the Court. He has offered several reasons for this, the most strongly supported of which is that he developed a habit of listening as a young man. Thomas comes from the Gullah/Geechee cultural region of coastal Georgia and is a member of this distinct African American ethnic group; he grew up speaking the Gullah language, which is a hybrid of English and various West African languages. Later in life, Thomas began to acquire an enthusiasm for his heritage, writing about it in the December 14, 2000 issue of The New York Times:

"When I was 16, I was sitting as the only black kid in my class, and I had grown up speaking a kind of a dialect. It's called Geechee. Some people call it Gullah now, and people praise it now. But they used to make fun of us back then. It's not standard English. When I transferred to an all-white school at a young age, I was self-conscious, like we all are... So I...just started developing the habit of listening."^[21]

Thomas has stated that he wishes to write a book about the culture.^[22]

Another theory, asserted by one set of Thomas biographers, is that Justice Thomas believes oral arguments are mostly unnecessary, and that the back-and-forth in oral arguments is often disrespectful to the attorneys trying to present their cases. (This view has been supported by Ann Scarlett, Professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, who was one of his law clerks.)^[23] The same biographers also theorize Thomas is uncomfortable in the rapid pacing of oral argument discussions, the supposition being he prefers a more cerebral, quieter environment in which to carefully contemplate matters of constitutional law.^[24]

Though Thomas is silent during most arguments before the Supreme Court, he had, up until his 16th term, spoken a few times each term.^[25] During the oral argument for NASA v. FLRA,^[26] Thomas engaged in a seven-minute-long question and answer exchange with one advocate^[27]—it is unheard of in recent years for this to happen without interruption by another justice.^{[citation needed]} In Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), Thomas raised an issue which would become important in the opinions ("the distinction . . . between an element of the offense and an enhancement factor"). In Capitol Square Review Board v. Pinette^[28] (1995), Virginia v. Black (2003), and Georgia v. Randolph (2006), Thomas presaged his eventual dissent with comments at oral argument.

Upon the conclusion of the 2006-2007 term of the Supreme Court, it was widely noted that Thomas had failed to utter a single word from the bench during the course of entire term.^[29] In November 2007, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, the Law Blog of the Wall Street Journal initiated the "When-Will-Justice-Thomas-Ask-a-Question Watch", noting that the justice had not asked a single question during oral arguments since February 22, 2006.^[30] CNN wrote an article on the two year anniversary of his last question during oral arguments in February 2008. ^[31]

[edit] Bibliography

• Thomas, Clarence (2007). My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir, Harper, ISBN 0-06-056555-1.

[edit] References

This section uses citations that are either broken or outdated. This section uses citations that link to broken or outdated sources, and are deemed unreliable. Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. Help on using footnotes is available. This article has been tagged since January 2008.

[edit] Sources

• Brock, David (1994). The Real Anita Hill, Touchstone, ISBN 0-02-904656-4
• Brooks, Roy L. Structures of Judicial Decision Making from Legal Formalism to Critical Theory
• Carp, Dylan (1998, September). Out of Scalia's Shadow. Liberty.
• Edward Shills and Max Rheinstien, Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society
• Foskett, Ken (2004). Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas, William Morrow, ISBN 0-06-052721-8
• 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
• 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.
• Thomas, Andrew Peyton (2001). Clarence Thomas: A Biography, Encounter Books, ISBN 1-893554-36-8
• Supreme Court official biography (PDF format)
• Supreme Discomfort
• An Outline of the Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas Controversy
• U.S. Supreme Court Multimedia
• Transcripts of Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on the Nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court
• A Conversation with Justice Thomas
• "So, Guy Walks Up to the Bar, and Scalia says..."
• The Justice Thomas Appreciation Page

[edit] External links

• Clarence Thomas Speaks Out BusinessWeek
• Entry on Clarence Thomas by John P. Vanzo in The New Georgia Encyclopedia
• 23 June 2007 59th Birthday Commemoration Article "Clarence Thomas . . . My Friend" by Ellis Washington in WorldNetDaily.com
• 20 October 2007 Book Review of his memoir Article "Justice Clarence Thomas' "My Grandfather's Son" by Ellis Washington in WorldNetDaily.com
• 2007 City Journal article on Thomas
• 2007 interview in BusinessWeek
• October 11, 1991 evening session of U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
• Clarence Thomas at the 2007 Annual National Lawyers Convention - November 2007
• Overview of Personal Memoir
• Biography of Clarence Thomas - Cornell Law School
• Washington Post article about Thomas

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	Incumbent
Order of precedence in the United States of America
Preceded by David Souter	United States order of precedence as of 2008	Succeeded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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

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–present: J.P. Stevens | A. Scalia | A. Kennedy | D. Souter | C. Thomas | R.B. Ginsburg | S. Breyer | S. Alito

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