Rosslyn Smith of the American Thinker on the left’s recent reappraisal of Justice Clarence Thomas:
The conventional wisdom on Justice Clarence Thomas is that he is an unimaginative intellectual featherweight and a clown. The way in which his reputation was traduced in his confirmation hearings and his notorious lack of interest in participating in oral arguments are cited as evidence. A new look at Justice Thomas’s influence of the Court by Jeffrey Toobin in the New Yorker sets this condescending notion on its head.
From Walter Russell Mead’s New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom
If Toobin’s revisionist take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work.
I recommend both Mead and the much longer Toobin article Partners: Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan? Don’t let the New Yorker headline and a few snarky paragraphs deter you. Toobin’s article analyzes how Thomas’s manner of approaching constitutional issues is changing the law and earning him more than just respect from legal thinkers across the political spectrum.
Harry Reid could not be reached for comment.
I hope that Thomas gets his deserved recognition. He is and has been a stalwart and reliable interpreter of the Constitution on the Supreme Court.
The Democrat party has ALWAYS been the racist party in US politics. Any Democrat who is supporting any conservative black person is probably undergoing a conversion to the conservative (i.e., non-racist) view. Halleluyah!
I’m all for giving Justice Thomas credit, but I have a tangential question: what’s the deal with Walter Russell Mead? Some months ago he was describing Obama as a “Jeffersonian,” which is, to put it mildly, ludicrous. Ever since I read that, I’ve had serious doubts about Mead’s judgment.
I’ll admit it, I was one of the people who thought he was a light-weight when he was nominated — then I read some of his opinions. He’s got a fine legal mind and his opinions are always incisive.
His partial dissent on Heller was amazing, arguing that while the court did the right thing, it simply did not go far enough, and the way he laid out the arguments was a thing of beauty.
What sweet revenge it would be!!
And btw, where are the thousands of books proving that Clarence Thomas is a sexual pervert. You can’t hide that proclivity for long, you know.