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Clarence Thomas


  • The Modern Relics in Crow's Cabinet of Curiosities

    by Matthew Dennis

    Understanding Harlan Crow's collection, including Nazi memorabilia, as a set of relics (and not trophies or investments) helps to clarify the unease Americans feel about his understanding of power and cultivation of relationships with people of influence over the federal judiciary.



  • What Does Clarence Thomas Think Clarence Thomas is Doing?

    A panel of scholars and journalists examine a paradox: how Clarence Thomas went from embracing the tenets of Black Nationalism to an administrative and judicial career that most characterize as hostile to the rights of Black Americans. 



  • We Don't Need to Pretend Clarence Thomas Can Read the Founders' Minds

    by Heidi Li Feldman and Dahlia Lithwick

    The approach to "original intent" laid out in recent gun control rulings imagines the founders as capable only of the most cramped and limited understanding of the function of law in a society, argue a legal scholar and veteran court reporter. 



  • Margaret Sanger's Ghost and the Antiabortion Movement

    by Melinda Cooper

    The anti-abortion right's invocation of eugenics in the Dobbs case and in their public rhetoric might seem cynical. But it could be effective, unless the history of Sanger's relationship to eugenics and reproductive freedom is better understood. 



  • Corey Robin on the Enigma of Clarence Thomas

    The political scientist's 2019 biography of the Justice comes in for new attention with Thomas's controversial judicial opinions (and the alleged actions of his wife on January 6). 



  • Originalism is Just Selective History

    by David H. Gans

    "This is a Court that insists it is following history and tradition where they lead, while cherry-picking the history it cares about to reach conservative results."



  • On the Historical Dilettantes Practicing Originalism

    by Joshua Zeitz

    "The functional problem with originalism is that it requires a very, very firm grasp of history — a grasp that none of the nine justices, and certainly few of their 20-something law clerks, freshly minted from J.D. programs, possess."