Precedent, Meet Clarence Thomas. You May Not Get Along. (Old article)

[In It to Win It]

Old article, but I thought I'd revive because it's still so relevant with the Dobbs decision and the Shinn v. Ramirez decision.

NY Times

No Paywall

WASHINGTON — Justice Clarence Thomas was busy in February. As usual, he asked no questions during Supreme Court arguments. But he made up for his silence with three opinions in eight days that took issue with some of the court’s most prominent precedents.

He called on Feb. 19 for the court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 decision that provided the press with broad First Amendment protections against libel suits brought by public officials. The Sullivan case — and rulings extending it — Justice Thomas wrote, “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”

The next day, he criticized Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, calling it “notoriously incorrect” and the product of misguided efforts to identify and protect fundamental rights under the due process clause of the 14th amendment.

A week later, he expressed skepticism about Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 decision that said the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide lawyers to poor people accused of serious crimes. Justice Thomas wrote that the Sixth Amendment, as understood by those who drafted and ratified it, guaranteed only the right to hire a lawyer.

The opinions underscored two distinctive aspects of Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence. He tries to unearth the original meaning of the Constitution, and he has no use for precedents that have veered from that original understanding.

At the Federalist Society’s annual dinner in 2013, he was asked about the doctrine of stare decisis, which is legal shorthand for respect for precedent and Latin for “to stand by things decided.”

“Stare decisis doesn’t hold much force for you?” Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit asked him during a public conversation at the dinner.

“Oh, it sure does,” Justice Thomas responded. “But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution.”

[elleng]

1. 'A week later, he expressed skepticism about Gideon v. Wainwright,

the 1963 decision that said the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide lawyers to poor people accused of serious crimes. Justice Thomas wrote that the Sixth Amendment, as understood by those who drafted and ratified it, guaranteed only the right to hire a lawyer.'

[3Hotdogs]

2. Justice Thomas, with all due respect to the court,

YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT !

[SWBTATTReg]

3. This guy could take more English lessons from history, on the huge number of words that changed

meaning over time...I only reproduced a portion of these old vs. new meanings of various words, the point I want to make is that this guy is stuck in the Middle Ages or worse.

1. AWFUL
Ever wonder why “awesome” means excellent but “awful” means really bad when they both derive from “awe”? In Old English, awe meant “fear, terror or dread.” From its use in reference to God the word came to mean “reverential or respectful fear.” By the mid-1700s, awe came to mean solemn and reverential wonder, tinged with fear, inspired by the sublime in nature—such as thunder or a storm at sea. Originally, awful and awesome were synonymous, but by the early 19th century, awful absorbed the negative aspects of the emotion and the word was used to mean frightful or exceedingly bad. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for awesome meaning “marvelous, great; stunning or mind-boggling” is from the Official Preppy Handbook, 1980.

2. CHEATER
A cheater was originally an officer appointed to look after the king's escheats—the land lapsing to the Crown on the death of the owner intestate without heirs. As William Gurnall wrote in 1662, “[A] Cheater may pick the purses of ignorant people, by shewing them something like the Kings Broad Seal, which was indeed his own forgery.” Mistrust of the king’s cheaters led the word into its current sense: a dishonest gamester or a swindler.

3. EGREGIOUS
Egregious now describes something outstandingly bad or shocking, but it originally meant remarkably good. It comes from the Latin egregius, meaning "illustrious, select"—literally, "standing out from the flock," from ex-, "out of," and greg-, "flock." Apparently the current meaning arose from ironic use of the original.

4. FURNITURE
Furniture originally meant equipment, supplies or provisions, in the literal or figurative sense. For example, in a 1570 translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry, there is mention of “Great increase & furniture of knowledge.” Gradually, the meaning narrowed to the current sense: large moveable equipment such as tables and chairs, used to make a house, office, or other space suitable for living or working.

5. GIRL
Girl once meant a child or young person of either sex. In The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer says of the summoner, “In daunger hadde he at his owene gise/ The yonge girles of the diocise.” In modern English, that’s, “In his own power had he, and at ease/ Young people of the entire diocese.”

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. Thomas is one of worst SCOTUS justice in history for a reason

In the legal community, Thomas is considered to be one of the worst SCOTUS justices in history

Link to tweet

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.

[In It to Win It]

5. I agree. Clarence Thomas is terrible

I just don't see how in Clarence Thomas' jurisprudential view that something like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would be upheld as constitutional today if it were left up to him.