“Ask the Author”: Supreme Discomfort, Part 2

This edition of “Ask the Author” features a discussion with Michael Fletcher and Kevin Merida of the Washington Post; their new book is Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas. Part 1 of the discussion can be found here.

For more on the book, see the official website here. You can also read the author’s original Washington Post Magazine profile of Justice Thomas here.

In the book, you reveal a lot about the Justice’s relationship with his family, many of whom clearly do not share his views or approve of many of his choices. You say at one point of his sister Emma that “there is little, except bloodline, that bonds them,” and you even note that Justice Thomas has said that his sister “ruined her life.” Can you discuss a bit about this has shaped him both personally and on the bench? How can he maintain such a strained relationship with certain members of his family, yet at the same time be willing to raise his nephew’s son as his own (Thomas’s nephew, Mark Martin, is serving a thirty-year jail sentence)?

Justice Thomas believes that people have the power to overcome their circumstances–however tough they may be. He seems to view his sister, now a cook at a boy’s home near Pin Point, as someone who has not taken full advantage of whatever meager opportunity she has had in her life. That fits into his larger frame and is something that would be echoed by one of his mentors, Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist. At the same time, Thomas recognizes the role his grandfather played in his life. His grandfather raised him, sent him to Catholic schools and essentially put Thomas on the path to success. Thomas would like to do the same for his great nephew and he is active in scholarship programs and often tries to mentor young people. Thomas’s jurisprudence shows a similar strain, showing little patience for victims and prodding people to look inward to overcome their problems.

Many discussions of Justice Thomas’s jurisprudence begin with his stance against affirmative action. Can you talk about what the key steps in his life were that shaped his views on the issue? How has occupying the seat once held by Thurgood Marshall – whom you note was nicknamed “Mr. Civil Rights” – affected the public’s view of him and his jurisprudence?

It seems that Justice Thomas’s opposition to affirmative action is rooted in his experience at Yale Law School. There he discovered that most of his black colleagues were from middle- and upper-middle class backgrounds. And, frankly, he questioned why they should benefit from affirmative action. Meanwhile, he felt that many white students questioned his presence at Yale and he saw affirmative action was part of the reason they did. Thomas thinks affirmative action makes it easy for people to diminish black achievement. Later, Thomas had a hard time reconciling affirmative action with his reading of the Constitution, which he feels prohibits any sorting by race. Of course, much of that is in direct opposition to the views of the late Justice Thurgood Marshall who viewed affirmative action as a meager tool to compensate for centuries of state-sanctioned discrimination. “Without race conscious policies, what would the nation’s police departments, fire departments, corporate offices, elite universities and even Congress look like?” Marshall might ask. Thomas, the nation’s second black justice, is always going to be compared to Marshall, who was the nation’s first black justice. Moreover, as race seems to have been a factor in nearly every step of Thomas’s rapid rise all the way to the Supreme Court, many critics view Thomas’s opposition to affirmative action as being in conflict with his own biography.

Has his jurisprudence been affected by the difficult confirmation hearings that he experienced? If so, which areas or aspects of his jurisprudence have been most affected in your opinion?

It seems that Justice Thomas’s views hardened because of the hearings. Many people who talk to him say that he still has a list in his head of who was with him and who was against him. Not that Justice Thomas is making his rulings based on who he likes, but it seems that the hearings isolated him in a way that cut off his interaction with many people from the left side of the political spectrum. Civil rights leaders say that he often engaged them back in his days working in the Reagan Administration. Who knows what the effect might be if Justice Thomas were applauded as, say, a speaker at a legal seminar of the NAACP, rather than being denigrated as a sellout by so many? Meanwhile, he has been embraced as a hero by much of the right.

It is impossible for us to say which area of his jurisprudence has been most affected. But Justice Thomas has emerged in his nearly 16 years on the court as what many people call the most conservative justice, and if his various dissents and concurrences were law he would move the court farther to the right than any other justice. Maybe that would be the case even if his hearings were not so scarring. But many people suspect that would not have been the case.

As he gains more and more experience on the Court (and gains more seniority), do you see Justice Thomas evolving at all? Do you think he’ll ever open up to the media, or begin to speak more at oral argument? Can he ever escape the charge that he is, as you say, “Scalia’s clone?”

It seems unlikely that Justice Thomas’s legal positions will change – but you never know. We don’t imagine his relationship with the media changing much nor do we expect him to suddenly grow loquacious at oral argument. But we do think that he is shedding the “Scalia’s clone” tag, largely because it is demonstrably untrue. The two justices may often vote the same, but it is also clear that Justice Thomas is less constrained by precedent and willing to go farther to return the law to what he sees as the intent of the Founders than any other justice.

Thanks again to Kevin and Mike.