Clarence Thomas set the table for the tea party by making originalism fashionable again. Many appointees to the court enjoy its role as arbiter of society's most divisive questions—race, abortion, religion, gay rights and national security—and show little desire to control their own power. Antonin Scalia, at best, thinks interpreting the Constitution based on its original meaning is "the lesser evil," as he wrote in a 1989 law journal article, because it prevents judges from pursuing their own personal policies. Justice Thomas, however, thinks that the meaning of the Constitution held at its ratification binds the United States as a political community, and that decades of precedent must be scraped off the original Constitution like barnacles on a ship's hull.
During Thomas's first years on the court, liberals loved to paint him as a blind follower of Justice Scalia, implying that he was too dumb to think for himself. Interestingly, there was never any serious argument from conservatives that Justice William Brennan wrote all of Justice Thurgood Marshall's opinions, even though the two were very close in jurisprudence.
On Justice Thomas's dedication to upholding the principle of equality:
In Adarand v. Pena (1995), striking down racial quotas in government contracting, Justice Thomas traced the nation's commitment to racial equality through the Constitution directly to the Declaration of Independence's promise that all men are created equal, just as did Abraham Lincoln. Affirmative action is "racial paternalism," he wrote, whose "unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination."
It was definitely a blessing in disguise that Thomas was not nominated as Chief Justice, because he is still able to put upholding the Constitution and not coalition forming as his central axiom.
No comments:
Post a Comment