Clarence Thomas Getting a Closer Look at The New Republic ...

by Cliopatria

During confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas twelve years ago, I appeared on a six person panel discussion at Antioch College. It should have told me something about the College as a world turned upside down when the panel's three male participants, black and white, argued against confirmation and the panel's three female participants, black and white, argued in favor of confirmation. In the intervening years, Thomas has created a record of judicial opinion. KC Johnson cites this review in The New Republic of that record by Crescat Sententia's Will Baude. KC finds Baude's effort to clear Thomas of suspicion that he is Justice Scalia lite"not altogether successful" and wonders what former Senator John Danforth would now make of his own argument then that Thomas would be a moderate justice. Expect more ink to spill over Justice Thomas's record. David Garrow will have a much longer piece on it in TNR late in the summer.

comments powered by Disqus

More Comments:

Richard Henry Morgan - 7/5/2004

I'm actually amazed that a panel at Antioch would find anybody in favor of Justice Thomas' confirmation. It's good to have one's preconceptions challenged.

I'm neither a big fan of Thomas, nor a big critic, but he does seem to have one advantage over Scalia in that he doesn't have Scalia's volcanic temper nor occasional blindspots (religion and military schools -- Scalia attended a boys' military prep school in NY -- don't led it be said that personal experiences don't occasionally guide justices -- Blackmun had been chief counsel to the Mayo Clinic, and when you read his opinion in Roe v. Wade, there's a huge amount of medical history, and very little legal analysis).

Bush did not cover himself in glory when he proclaimed Thomas the most qualified person for the job. Neither did the ABA panel, some of whom proclaimed him unqualified. Politics abound.

Andrew Ackerman - 7/5/2004

Right... it's a web-only article, I think, and so Lexis Nexis hasn't indexed it. But I got it through Baude's own site. Thanks.

Ralph E. Luker - 7/5/2004

It's odd, Andrew. If I go to Will Baude's own link to it at Crescat Sententia, you can access the article without a subscription. If I try to access it from the link at Cliopatria, you can't.

Andrew Ackerman - 7/5/2004

Is that viewable without a TNR subscription?