{"id":1992279,"date":"2023-08-06T05:15:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-06T09:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-justices-people\/"},"modified":"2023-08-06T05:17:14","modified_gmt":"2023-08-06T09:17:14","slug":"the-justices-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-justices-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice&#8217;s People"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">4<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-justices-people%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1992279&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div>\n<h2>The People\u2019s Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that \u2063Define Him<\/h2>\n<h3>By Adam J. White<\/h3>\n<p>From the start, critics of the Supreme \u200bCourt have denounced it as the political tool\u2063 of powerful \u200belites. Especially its elite critics.<\/p>\n<p>When the Senate Judiciary Committee convened in 1991 for hearings on Clarence Thomas\u2019s \u200bSupreme \u2064Court nomination, for example, Democratic senator Ted Kennedy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/content\/pkg\/GPO-CHRG-THOMAS\/pdf\/GPO-CHRG-THOMAS-1.pdf\">complained<\/a> that the Court \u200cwas taking an elitist turn. &#8220;Many\u200c of\u2062 us are concerned \u200dabout the direction the Supreme Court has taken in recent years,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It \u200dhas \u2062increasingly abandoned its role as the guardian of the powerless \u2062in our society.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Days later, another witness took the point further, attacking not just the Court but \u200dalso the nominee. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.govinfo.gov\/content\/pkg\/GPO-CHRG-THOMAS\/pdf\/GPO-CHRG-THOMAS-2.pdf\">According to Professor Charles Lawrence<\/a>, Thomas had striven &#8220;to serve those who are most powerful in this society, and he\u200d has \u200dserved them well.&#8221; The Stanford law professor argued that\u2063 the Court needed\u200d a\u2063 &#8220;voice for those who too often go unheard&#8221;\u2014not, he insisted, Clarence \u2064Thomas.<\/p>\n<p>But Thomas was uniquely well\u2063 suited to hear the powerless. Born dirt poor in Pin Point, Georgia, and\u200d raised by a grandfather \u200dwho \u2063taught him how to carry a hard life\u2019s heavy burdens, Thomas later studied at Yale Law\u2062 and served in high \u200clevels of government. He knew both power and poverty.<\/p>\n<p>After\u200b Sen. Kennedy, Prof. Lawrence, and others failed to thwart his path to the Court, Chief Justice William \u200dRehnquist gave Thomas the judicial oath: to &#8220;administer justice without \u200drespect\u2062 to person, and do equal right\u2062 to\u2062 the poor and to the\u200d rich.&#8221; As Thomas later recalled in \u200dhis memoir, <em>My Grandfather\u2019s Son<\/em>, the words left him &#8220;[s]truggling to\u2063 control my surging emotions \u2026 thinking as I did \u2063so of how Daddy and \u200cAunt Tina\u200b had raised me\u200b to fulfill it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yet Justice\u2063 Thomas would \u2063be dogged relentlessly by accusations that his judgments\u200c and jurisprudence punished the poor and \u2064weak. \u2062A year into his\u200b service on the Court, the <em>New York \u200dTimes<\/em> called him\u2063 &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1992\/02\/27\/opinion\/the-youngest-cruelest-justice.html\">The \u200cYoungest, Cruelest Justice<\/a>&#8221; and condemned him \u2062for purportedly turning his back on society\u2019s most vulnerable. And this year, when the Supreme Court ruled that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/msnbc-proves-clarence-thomas-point-that-race-based-admissions-uphold-the-bigotry-of-low-expectations\/\" title=\"MSNBC validates Clarence Thomas' argument on race-based admissions and the perpetuation of low expectations.\">race-based university admissions<\/a> are unlawful, one prominent pundit <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MichaelEDyson\/status\/1674436263972093954\">tweeted<\/a> a photograph of Thomas, denouncing &#8220;the face of a man who climbed the ladder of affirmative action to his present perch of power only to help destroy the very\u200b ladder \u200bon which\u200d he ascended.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After decades of such attacks, Judge Amul Thapar responds in Thomas\u2019s\u2062 defense. &#8220;By cherry-picking his opinions or misrepresenting them,&#8221; Thapar \u200dwrites, &#8220;Justice Thomas\u2019s\u200d critics claim\u200b that his originalism favors the rich \u2062over the poor, the strong over the weak, and corporations over consumers.&#8221; Thapar shows \u200dthat many of Thomas\u2019s opinions actually cut in the other direction. He recounts 12 of those cases, and the people \u200bat\u2062 the \u2064heart of them, in <em>The People\u2019s Justice: Clarence Thomas and\u2063 the Constitutional Stories\u200b That Define Him<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Some \u200bof these cases are already famous, their \u200dpeople the subjects\u200c of entire books. The best example is Susette Kelo, who \u2062struggled to defend her\u2063 modest home against \u2062the combined powers of local\u2062 politicians and Pfizer, who sought to force the sale of her house for the sake of a \u200bnew corporate campus that would supposedly boost the local economy and tax revenues. When the Supreme Court <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/545\/469\/\">upheld<\/a> their taking of private \u200cproperty as constitutional, Justice Thomas \u2062dissented emphatically: &#8220;Something has gone seriously awry with \u200bthis Court\u2019s interpretation \u200bof the Constitution. Though\u200b citizens \u2064are safe \u200bfrom the government\u2063 in their homes, the \u2062homes themselves are not,&#8221; due to \u2064the Court\u2019s &#8220;almost complete deference it grants to \u200dlegislatures as to what satisfies \u200cit.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Less famous are other cases, such as <em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/527\/41\/\">City of Chicago <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/527\/41\/\">v.<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/527\/41\/\">  \u200b Morales <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/527\/41\/\">(1999)<\/a>, where the Court ruled that Chicago\u2019s anti-gang loitering law was unconstitutionally vague. Here, too, Justice Thomas dissented, highlighting the people who would suffer from the Court\u2019s ruling\u2014and his colleagues\u2019 comfortable distance from the brutal reality of the situation.\u2063 &#8220;Today the Court \u2063focuses extensively on the \u2018rights\u2019 of \u2064gang members and\u200b their companions,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;It\u2062 can safely do so\u2014the\u200b people who will have to live\u200d with the consequences of\u2064 today\u2019s opinion do not live in \u2064our neighborhood. Rather, the people who will suffer from our lofty pronouncements are people like Ms. Susan Mary \u200dJackson; people who \u2063have\u2064 seen \u200ctheir\u2062 neighborhoods literally destroyed by gangs\u2064 and violence and drugs.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The book\u2019s title and cover photo notwithstanding, each \u2063chapter\u200c centers not \u200con Justice Thomas\u2019s opinions, but\u2062 on the personal stories underlying each case. In each chapter, Thomas\u2019s opinion\u201410 dissents and 2 concurrences, never a \u2063majority opinion for the Court\u2014punctuates a story of common people and communities. The book\u2063 might have been\u2064 called <em>The Justice\u2019s \u200cPeople<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Judge \u2063Thapar\u2019s selections make clear that \u200dempathy does\u2063 not point consistently in one jurisprudential or political direction. In \u200d <em>Morales<\/em>, for example, \u200dThomas \u2064gave voice to\u200d the\u2064 unheard communities seeking relief \u2064from gang violence.\u2063 The very next chapter focuses on <em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/561\/742\/\">McDonald\u2064 <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/561\/742\/\">v.<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/561\/742\/\">  City of Chicago <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/561\/742\/\">(2010)<\/a>, where\u200c the Court \u200cstruck down Chicago\u2019s handgun laws as violating the Constitution\u2019s right to keep\u2062 and bear arms.\u2064 Thomas concurred, highlighting the 14th Amendment\u2019s original purpose of ensuring newly freed\u2064 blacks could defend themselves\u200b and their rights against hostile \u200cwhites, and\u200c connecting it to the \u2064importance\u200c of the right \u2064to keep and bear arms today. Thapar \u200dtitles his <em>McDonald<\/em> chapter &#8220;The Sharecropper\u2019s Son,&#8221;\u200c and the <em>Morales<\/em> \u2063chapter \u200c&#8221;Streets of Terror&#8221;; a \u200bprogressive\u200b author might apply the &#8220;Streets of Terror&#8221; label to the gun case instead.<\/p>\n<p>Thapar, who serves on \u200dthe U.S. Court of\u2062 Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, concludes with a chapter telling the personal stories of a lawyer and client\u2014and Justice Thomas\u2019s reason for ruling against them. In <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/01-1107\">Virginia <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/01-1107\">v.<\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/01-1107\">  Black <\/a><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/supremecourt\/text\/01-1107\">(2003)<\/a>, David Baugh, \u2064a black man, was \u200dcounsel for a KKK cross-burner. He claimed cross-burning was a form of speech protected by the First\u2063 Amendment. The\u2064 Court\u2064 ultimately ruled in his favor, but Thomas \u2063again disagreed, devoting the first part of his dissent to those who would suffer\u200c under \u2062the Court\u2019s\u2062 decision. Recounting\u200d some \u2062of history\u2019s countless examples, he reminded the Court\u2014and its audience, the American people\u2014that &#8220;in \u200bour culture, cross burning has almost \u2063invariably \u2062meant lawlessness and understandably instills in its victims well-grounded fear of physical violence.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the end,\u2062 empathy \u200citself is not the final criterion of any case, and Thapar isn\u2019t\u200d arguing otherwise. Far from it. Thapar writes\u200d at the outset that &#8220;the judge\u2019s role is to determine what the words \u2064 [of the Constitution and laws] meant when they were enacted and to apply them to \u200dthe cases in front of\u2062 him \u200bor her. Nothing more, nothing less.&#8221; Nor does\u200d originalism always point toward either individual liberty or democracy. &#8220;Sometimes, originalism\u2063 means vindicating the rights that are in the Constitution. \u2026 Sometimes, it \u2063means handing control over \u2062the law back to America\u2019s elected representatives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But <em>The People\u2019s Justice<\/em> shows that constitutional originalism can level the \u200bscales\u2014the neutral and independent rule of law vindicates the weak\u200d against the strong much more than the \u200cRoberts Court\u2019s critics would \u2062acknowledge. &#8220;You may be\u2062 surprised by how often originalism counsels a result for the little guy,&#8221; Thapar writes. Three decades ago, Justice Scalia\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/teachingamericanhistory.org\/document\/originalism-the-lesser-evil\/\">seminal defense<\/a> of constitutional originalism warned that the left\u2019s &#8220;living Constitution&#8221; does not always expand liberty, and often contracts it. Today Thapar offers a \u2064similar message. And looking beyond\u2063 Thomas\u2019s opinions, one sees such themes in the judicial\u200c opinions of Justice Neil Gorsuch, whose strongest criticisms of the modern \u200badministrative state have often <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180423005550\/https:\/www.weeklystandard.com\/adam-j-white\/higher-justice\">come<\/a> in <a href=\"https:\/\/supreme.justia.com\/cases\/federal\/us\/584\/15-1498\/\">cases<\/a> involving vulnerable\u2064 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/04\/29\/politics\/gorsuch-textualism-supreme-court-immigration\/index.html\">immigrants<\/a> suffering under arbitrary \u200cand unsteady\u200d regulatory regimes. Gorsuch also is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/opinion\/articles\/2023-06-25\/gorsuch-is-the-supreme-court-s-strongest-defender-of-native-american-rights\">particularly attuned to the plights of Native American tribes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But one must keep in \u200bmind, again, that\u200b the justices\u2019 \u2064oath is to &#8220;administer justice without respect \u200cto person, and do equal\u2062 right to the poor and to the rich&#8221; alike. &#8220;Sometimes that will\u2062 mean that \u200cthe less sympathetic party triumphs,&#8221; Thapar admits.<\/p>\n<p>Many readers will pick up <em>The People\u2019s Justice<\/em> expecting mostly stories of Justice Thomas\u2019s humble \u2063origins, or a\u2064 comprehensive analysis of his jurisprudence. That isn\u2019t this book. For Thomas\u2019s own story, none have put it better than\u200d Thomas himself,\u200c in <em>My Grandfather\u2019s Son<\/em>. For his jurisprudence, the \u2063best book so far is\u2063 Ralph Rossum\u2019s <em>Understanding Clarence Thomas: The Jurisprudence of Constitutional Restoration<\/em> (2014).<\/p>\n<p>The most prominent example of Thomas\u2019s judicial empathy acting hand-in-hand with his staunch originalism is the opinion he published shortly \u200dafter Thapar\u2019s book arrived. \u200cIn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.supremecourt.gov\/opinions\/22pdf\/20-1199_hgdj.pdf\">the Harvard \u200cand North Carolina cases<\/a>, Thomas\u2019s account of the 14th Amendment\u2019s protection\u2064 of civil rights\u2063 through its prohibition of \u2062<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-justices-people\/\" title=\"Justice's People\">race-based line-drawing focuses<\/a> on those\u200b who\u200b quietly suffered under affirmative action. To Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson\u2019s arguments in favor\u200b of racial affirmative action, Thomas replied: &#8220;How, for example, would \u200dJustice Jackson explain the need \u200dfor race-based preferences to \u2064the Chinese student who \u200chas worked hard his whole life, only to be denied college admission in part because of his skin color? If such\u2063 a burden would seem \u200ddifficult \u2064to impose on a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/clarence-thomas-blasts-ketanji-brown-jacksons-racist-worldview-cancerous-to-young-minds\/\" title=\"Clarence Thomas criticizes Ketanji Brown Jackson's 'racist' worldview as harmful to young minds.\">bright-eyed young person<\/a>, that\u2019s because it\u200c should be. History\u2062 has taught us to abhor theories \u2063that call\u200d for elites to pick racial winners and losers in the name of sociological experimentation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The last line echoed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/books\/edition\/Assessing_the_Reagan_Years\/eBV5AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&#038;gbpv=1&#038;bsq=%22Civil%20Rights%20as%20a%20Principle%22\">an essay Thomas\u2064 wrote in 1988<\/a>, before his appointment\u2064 to the \u200bCourt. Writing of race-based affirmative action while chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he emphasized both the harms it \u2063did even to its nominal beneficiaries, and the misguided intentions of the elites who administered it. Then-chairman Thomas warned that &#8220;[n]o one in this country should be made the fall guy for\u2064 some other person\u2019s easy \u2062way of solving problems.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Surely a future edition of <em>The\u200b People\u2019s Justice<\/em> will include Thomas\u2019s concurrence in \u2064the affirmative\u2062 action cases. It epitomizes his \u2063jurisprudence, and \u2062the \u200cprinciples and character that underlie it.<\/p>\n<p><em>The\u2062 People\u2019s Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him<\/em><br \/>  by Amul Thapar<br \/> Regnery Gateway, 304 pp., $32.99<\/p>\n<p><em>Adam\u200c J. White is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and\u200c co-director\u2062 of the Antonin Scalia Law School\u2019s C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of \u200bthe Administrative State.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the beginning, the Supreme Court faced criticism as a political tool for the powerful. Even its elite detractors voiced concerns. During Clarence Thomas&#8217;s nomination hearings in 1991, Senator Ted Kennedy accused the Court of adopting an elitist approach. He believed that many of its decisions were favoring the privileged few.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1425,"featured_media":1992280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1992279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-free-beacon"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1992279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1992279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1992280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1992279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1992279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1992279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}