Thomas at 20

This October marks the twentieth anniversary of Justice Clarence Thomas's service on the Supreme Court.  Justice Thomas is no doubt the most principled jurist on the Court, because he consistently follows not only the text of the Constitution but it's principles as well.  Ken Masugi, who taught Thomas about the natural law and natural rights principles of the American Founding while Thomas was Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, recently wrote a very good essay on Thomas.  One of the highlights:

Thomas calls for legislators to be more aware of the limits on their actions, especially those that undermine individual liberties, including the liberty of campaign contributors to give anonymously and of property owners to be free of bureaucratic inconvenience. Perhaps the greatest act of liberation Thomas has performed is that of pulling off the blinders of conservatives and lawyers when it comes to accepting the conventional, without questioning it in light of the founding principles. When he performs this exercise, he liberates them from the dubious premises of previous generations of interpretation. In this, Thomas is, as few men ever truly are, a free man who affirms free government, that is, self-government. It is Thomas, more than any other justice since the great Chief Justice John Marshall, who has enabled citizens to see what a Constitution involves.

Also, in case you may be interested, here is an undergraduate thesis on Justice Thomas that explores his understanding of the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and how that understanding serves as the antidote to the legal positivism that ails both the Right and Left.

I hope that Thomas serves on the court for another twenty years.  God bless him.