Thomas asks question for second time in a decade at Supreme Court

[Calista241]

Source: The Hill

Justice Clarence Thomas, who is known for his silence, shocked spectators in court Wednesday when he asked a question during arguments in a dispute over racial discrimination in jury selection.

Thomas's question, which marks the second time in a decade the court's leading conservative has spoken during arguments, came in the case of a Mississippi man who has been tried six times for the 1996 murders of four people inside a furniture store.

Thomas last spoke in February 2016 when he asked several questions during oral arguments in a gun rights case.

On Wednesday, Thomas waited until the very end of the hour-long arguments to ask if the defense for defendant Curtis Flowers, who is black, had struck any jurors from the sixth trial and, if so, what their races were.

Read more: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/434933-thomas-asks-question-in-supreme-court-for-second-time-in-a-decade

[NurseJackie]

1. Clarence Thomas is in over his head...

... he remains silent because he doesn't want people to KNOW he's an idiot.

[MosheFeingold]

5. Actually

He's said why he seldom speaks: (1) he prefers to listen; (2) he thinks oral arguments add little to the briefs and are an outdated tradition; and (3) he grew up embarrassed by his accent, because he was repeatedly belittled for it both at Holy Cross and Yale, so he remains a very reluctant public speaker.

I get that; I have a Yiddish/German accent and was repeatedly made fun of most of my life for it. I just got louder as my defense mechanism. But I could see how someone could also withdraw.

I don't care for Thomas or his legal reasoning, but he is a sharp guy, and many of the attacks on his intelligence smack of white racism.

[llmart]

6. I'm pretty sure he had to speak plenty of times to get through law school.

So I'm not buying that excuse.

[JudyM]

10. Also if he had a soul he'd be far more ashamed of his actions than his voice.

[Quackers]

17. Kinda off subject but

A community college I went to a few years ago offered Public Speaking as an online class. No actual public speaking required to pass that class. Crazy times we live in...

[ehrnst]

11. "Smacks of racism."

[Hortensis]

38. Smacks of intelligence and insight. Thomas

has always lacked the fine character and judicial temperament members of the judiciary at all levels should have, and we've always known that.

He is on the far right of the court and gives every sign of waiting only for a majority to overturn 230 years of precedent decisions since the court was established in 1789 and replace our nation's liberal legal principles with authoritarian conservatism that will smash individual and electoral rights.

Squarely in the crosshairs are the electorate's rights to choose to have progressive government programs and the right to "privacy" of decisions about our bodies, i.e., not government's business to decide if we can have elective operations or how many children we can have, if any. He already rules in favor of whatever authority is involved against individual rights most of the time.

He was a mature man when he married a mature woman, btw, and I believe his wife's frequent displays of outstandingly bad character give insight into his. She is a really nasty, far-right piece of work.

[DirtEdonE]

16. What smacked of racism was bush's appointment of thomas

A crass, cynical appointment by none other than george hw bush in an attempt to claim some moral high ground by appointing a black man to the Supreme Court even though clarence thomas was among the least qualified black candidates available and least qualified to ever to be appointed. He was quite credibly accused by Anita Hill of sexual abuse in his office.

But being a repubican none of that mattered. All bush wanted was a reliable, if not qualified, voice on the Supreme Court.

clarence thomas and brett kavanaugh belong together but certainly NOT on the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Perhaps they'd be more at home sharing a jail cell. thomas should have been impeached years ago for his behavior while on the court.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/02/the-case-for-impeaching-clarence-thomas.html

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/29/barbara-litalien-clarence-thomas-impeachment-801680

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/04/22/why-clarence-thomas-still-supreme-court/JbfBaClpmBcPKy16TmhHAL/story.html

[Gothmog]

19. The Five Worst Supreme Court Justices In American History, Ranked

In the legal community, Thomas is considered to be one of the worst SCOTUS justices in history https://thinkprogress.org/the-five-worst-supreme-court-justices-in-american-history-ranked-f725000b59e8/

5) Justice Clarence Thomas

Justice Clarence Thomas is the only current member of the Supreme Court who has explicitly embraced the reasoning of Lochner Era decisions striking down nationwide child labor laws and making similar attacks on federal power. Indeed, under the logic Thomas first laid out in a concurring opinion in United States v. Lopez, the federal minimum wage, overtime rules, anti-discrimination protections for workers, and even the national ban on whites-only lunch counters are all unconstitutional.

Though Thomas’s views are rare today, they have, sadly, not been the least bit uncommon during the Supreme Court’s history. He makes this list because, frankly, he should know better than his predecessors. As I explain in Injustices, many of the justices who resisted progressive legislation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were, like Field, motivated by ideology. Many others, however, were motivated by fear of the rapid changes state and federal lawmakers implemented in the wake of the even more rapid changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. It was possible to believe, in a world where factories, railroads, and the laws required to regulate factories and railroads were all very new things, that these laws would, as Herbert Hoover once said about the New Deal, “destroy the very foundations of our American system” by extending “government into our economic and social life.”
But Thomas has the benefit of eighty years of American history that Hoover had not witnessed when he warned of an overreaching government. In that time, the Supreme Court largely abandoned the values embraced by Justice Field, and the United States became the mightiest nation in the history of politics and the wealthiest nation in the history of money.

[MosheFeingold]

20. I don't disagree with anything posted

About him being a terrible Justice. I said that in my original post.

He's just not a stupid man. That was the sole objection I made.

There are lots of very intelligent people with whom I've disagreed over the decades. For example:

William F. Buckley, being the first to come to mind. (He was also a gentleman and very nice.)
Charles Krauthammer (same)
Bush, Sr.
The elder Koch brother
Martin Luther (the theologian)
Adolf Eichman (the Nazi who put the Final Solution into effect)

Etc.

All these people are (in obviously varying ways) people with whom I disagree on almost everything. (As do you, I hope.)

They are not, however, stupid. I doubt anyone here things any of the people on that list are (or were) not intelligent.

On both the left and the right, there is a specific tendency to belittle the intelligence of minorities and women with whom they disagree -- for example AOC is constantly mocked by the right as "stupid". No, she's quite bright.

It's bigotry, regardless of which side does it.

As is claiming Thomas is an idiot and falling into (subconsciously, I hope) racist attacks on his intelligence.

No, he's quite smart. He's just wrong.

Just like the white guys on the list I wrote -- none of whom are called "stupid".

[Gothmog]

21. As a member of the bar, I disagree

Thomas is not that smart and has been a very bad SCOTUS justice. I could go into a number of Thomas' opinions or dissents which are pure dreck but I will let Scalia give you one major reason why Thomas does not belong on the SCOTUS

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

[MosheFeingold]

23. Objection

1. Hearsay
2. Depending on state and context, violation of Dead Man's Statute.

Also not relevant, in that the proffered statement relates to Justice Thomas's flawed judicial opinions (which are not in dispute), not his intellect, which is the matter at issue.

(Also a member of two bars, going on 69 years in the first.)

[Gothmog]

24. Again, your analysis is simply wrong

Thomas is not smart by legal standards and does not belong on the SCOTUS. Your defense of Thomas is amusing but wrong. Thomas has earned a slot on the list of all time bad SCOTUS justices for a good reason.

[MosheFeingold]

25. Objection

Opinion without foundation.

Note also, I am not "defending" Thomas. I am objecting to a calling a black man "stupid" for having legal reasoning with which you and I disagree.

Do you consider Adolf Eichmann stupid? No, he was evil and wrong. But not stupid. Quite an evil genius who killed basically all of my extended family.

People don't call vile white people "stupid." People do call vile black people "stupid."

Thomas is very wrong-headed. He also was a cum laude graduate of Holy Cross, got into Yale (better than me, I went to NYU) and graduated in the top half. He's not stupid. He's just wrong.

[Gothmog]

27. We are calling a man who is a justice on the SCOTUS stupid because he is stupid

Real lawyers have no trouble calling Thomas stupid

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Link to tweet

Finally this

Link to tweet

and

Link to tweet

I have read and I actually understood enough of Thomas' opinions to have a good basis for my opinion of him.

BTW, the use of legal jargon that you do not understand did not help your argument

[NurseJackie]

33. The NAACP Position on Clarence Thomas

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41067770?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[Gothmog]

36. I am aware of the NAACP's opinion of Thomas

I was working with some NAACP attorneys on the Texas redistricting case and his name came up. They really have no respect for Thomas.

[NurseJackie]

34. I do.

People don't call vile white people "stupid."

I do.

Clarence Thomas is stupid. He's in over his head. (But apparently he does know how to cut-and-paste then tweak with the help of a thesaurus.)

Not as clever as he imagines himself to be... that's still stupid.

[Gothmog]

37. I only passed the bar 35+ years ago

I had the fun of judging for the last three years a moot court competition for transactional lawyers and the other two judges/attorneys on the panel of the judges in these competitions had fun telling the contestants that they were both born after I took the bar.

I am amused at your attempted use of legal jargon. I never liked Scalia but I agree with his assessment of Thomas

[Gothmog]

35. The other four bad SCOTUS justices made this list because they were racists or corrupt

Thomas made this list of the five worst SCOTUS justices in history because he is stupid. The other SCOTUS justices on this list were involved in Dred Scott and the separate but equal decision. Thomas made this list solely because he is stupid No one is attacking Thomas because he is not white, they are attacking Thomas because he is an idiot and has a history of writing some really dumb opinions or dissents

This list was put together by constitutional scholars who actually practices law and made their determination based on numerous poorly written and reasoned opinions from Thomas. I have read many of Thomas' opinions/dissents and I agree with the constitutional scholars who compiled this list

[MurrayDelph]

12. I always thought

He didn't ask questions because he had already made up his mind.

[yardwork]

32. Bingo!

[IronLionZion]

2. Time to retire, Clarence

[Polybius]

15. Not yet

Wait until 2021 please.

[Paladin]

3. Pathetic nonentity.

When he retires, who will notice? I will never forget---nor forgive---the despicable hearings by which he got that seat on the Court, then settled in for decades of service-free existence.

[maxsolomon]

4. He's been on the court how long? 1991. 28 years.

And he's only 70.

He's going to be there until 2030, at a minimum, unless he Scalias first.

[Evolve Dammit]

7. Long Dong Silver is alive! He's alive!

[Evolve Dammit]

8. For those who don't recall, Anita Hill swore that one of Clarence's attempts to sexually

harass her was to discuss the porn actor "Long Dong Silver" and relate it to his own prowess. He is a pig, and should be unemployed. But thanks to Joe Biden, other witnesses were not allowed to testify, and he was confirmed as a Supreme for LIFE.
Thanks Joe and FU Clarence Long Dong.

[llmart]

14. Don't forget about the pubic hair on the Coke can.

Too bad they didn't have #MeToo back then.

[Evolve Dammit]

26. I an't forget any of the testimony that was too bizarre to make up. He is scum.

[yardwork]

31. Al Franken had to resign but Clarence Thomas gets to determine the way we all live.

[BumRushDaShow]

9. Wow.

Zombie Scalia must have appeared to operate his marionette.

[tclambert]

13. Was it "Are we there yet?"

[Capt. America]

18. Good to see him earning his pay.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

22. "Can we break for lunch yet?" nt

[Yeehah]

28. Such an inquisitive mind

Asshole doesn't even have to think and still gets paid.

[Hotler]

29. What time is lunch?.............nt

[dalton99a]

40. 5-Year Periodical Cicada Emerges in U.S. Supreme Court