Clarence Thomas earns our scorn

[Nevilledog]

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Los Angeles Times
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"Thomas’ career authoritarianism, fully unleashed in the Roe reversal, is just one more outrageous moment in a flood of outrageous, unsavory moments that is the modern story of the right," writes Erin Aubry Kaplan. (via @latimesopinion)
FILE - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaks Sept. 16, 2021, at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. Thomas says the Supreme Court has been changed by the leak of a draft opinion earlier this month. The opinion suggests the court is poised to overturn the right to an abortion recognized nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade. The conservative Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 and has long called...
latimes.com
Op-Ed: Clarence Thomas earns our scorn
Thomas' concurring opinion in the decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade urges the right wing toward more fascism.
7:30 PM · Jul 3, 2022

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-07-03/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-roe-vs-wade

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https://archive.ph/V8Mw6

Thirty-one years after his confirmation to the Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas is having his moment.

It’s been a long time coming. For most of those three decades, the ultra-conservative jurist stood in the shadows, on the sidelines, largely silent. He wrote little in the way of opinions and said less. In photos he always looked unhappy and uncomfortable, as if acutely aware of what critics thought of him, especially the many Black people who saw him as an entirely unworthy replacement for the first Black justice, civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall.

Of course, it was President George H.W. Bush’s cynical racial calculation that put Thomas on the court — trying to appeal to harder-edged conservatives while appearing progressive — but it is Thomas who has long borne the brunt of our scorn.

He’s earned it. As low-key as he’s been, Thomas has nonetheless carried water for the far right, which has been exponentially emboldened by the Trump presidency and the rapid transformation of the GOP into a fact-denying cult with little use for sound reasoning, legal or otherwise.

But it has always had a use for Thomas.

Now, at last, he commands attention. His concurring opinion in the court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade doesn’t just concur, it urges the right wing toward more fascism, more undoing of rights not explicitly articulated in the 14th Amendment, rights Thomas believes are not protected by “substantive due process.” Unlike his fellow conservative jurists, Thomas is taking a certain relish in kicking over cans, a triumphalism that feels downright Trumpian.

*snip*

[UTUSN]

1. Poppy's "cynical racial calculation" - perfect phrase but it wasn't to appear progressive.

It was his trademark Dirty Tricks - in this case to put Dems over the barrel of having to oppose a member of an otherwise Democratic constituent group. The author had it more correct when he said "cynical".

[Initech]

2. He really is one of the worst human beings in the country right now.

Of course replace "human being" with "soulless ghoul" and that would be a better fit!

[BigmanPigman]

3. His mother should have aborted him.

That would have benefited the country more than anything else.

[Jade Fox]

4. Please don't say that...

Abortion is not some sort of weapon, even in fantasy.

[ShazzieB]

5. Amen to this.

That's not a place where anyone should be going. Weaponizing reproductive health care is not something to joke about. Especially now.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. Hillary Clinton was a classmate of Thomas where thomas was a person of grievance

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[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

7. I can't hear Justice Thomas over his hypocrisy re: Loving v. Virgina.

If he's going to support only rights which appear in the Constitution, then he's got to vote overturn anti-miscegenations laws which criminalize interracial marriage.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

8. 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

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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.

[question everything]

9. He also wants to overturn the rights of married couple for contraception

Wonder what he and Ginny have been using..

[czarjak]

10. "One of the good ones" according to Rushbo.

[hardluck]

11. Wrote little in the way of opinions?

Say what you want about Thomas but he is a prolific writer. He’s written over 700 opinions in his 31 years on the court. In comparison, Robert’s, has spent about half the time on the court and has only authored roughly 200 opinions. Thomas writes so many dissents and concurrences because while he and other justices might agree on the ultimate outcome, his reasoning differs, many times dramatically.