STEVEN HAYWARD: THE VINDICATION OF CLARENCE THOMAS—AND THE LEFT’S FREAKOUT.

I’m gaining weight and running out of popcorn watching the left freak out about the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy. But beyond just the theatrics of the left’s primal screams and desperation tactics it is delightful to see the left begin to reckon with something more fundamental going on, which in one sentence I’ll assert is the growing vindication of the constitutional originalism of Justice Clarence Thomas.

It should be noted, as a placeholder, that constitutional originalism comes in several forms which differ considerably, but I won’t go into these myriad distinctions because it would take a long time. Interested readers might check out some of the helpful work on this by Lawrence Solum of Georgetown Law School. Some conservative jurists—one thinks of Rehnquist and Scalia in particular—were highly inconsistent in their originalist jurisprudence, but Thomas has been consistent from Day One on the Court. If the principles and reasoning of Thomas’s opinions are to be compared with a particular jurist of our past, it would have to be John Marshall.

Liberals have always dismissed Thomas as simply Scalia’s wingman, though no one who actually read with any care their separate opinions, concurrences, and dissents would think so. But the great thing about being a liberal is that you can just go with a cliche and skip the careful thinking part.

But now that the whole scene is in flux with the arrival of Justice Gorsuch—who, like Justice Thomas, believes that the natural law tradition in legal history stretching back to Roman times still has today what social scientists call “normative” value—the left is taking stock of things, and realizing that they are in a heap of trouble.

Read the whole thing.