Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas warned that the leak of a draft majority opinion overturning Roe v. Wade could erode public trust in the court and eventually lead to its total demise.
“I wonder how long we’re going to have these institutions at the rate we’re undermining them, and then I wonder when they’re gone or destabilized what we will have as a country and I don’t think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them,” Thomas said at a conference.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I’m in, it changes the institution fundamentally,” he continued. “You begin to look over your shoulder. It’s like kind of an infidelity – that you can explain it but you can’t undo it.”
Saying the leak was “tremendously bad,” Thomas added that it was beyond “anyone’s imagination” that even a single line from a draft opinion would be publicly leaked, not to mention an entire draft opinion nearly 100 pages long.
Thomas said that the court has taken a turn for the worse since he was nominated in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush.
“This is not the court of that era,” he said. “I sat with Ruth Ginsburg for almost 30 years and she was actually an easy colleague to deal with… We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were family.”
“You would never visit Supreme Court justices’ houses when things didn’t go our way. We didn’t throw temper tantrums. I think it is… incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat.”
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
8 Responses
The disgusting hypocrisy of Thomas claiming that “trust” has been lost by the leak has been noted even by conservative court observers. His wife has been actively and openly involved in planning and fundraising for a variety of right wing efforts to undermine our democracy including facilitating the January 6th riots (although she was smart enough not to actually breach the capital). HE never recuses himself and has actively voted on issues where her efforts are clearly related and create an obvious appearance of conflict. CJ Roberts says he he is helpless to intervene since each judge makes his own decisions on conflicts and ethics.
The Supreme Court was established by the founders in the Constitution as one of the three co-equal branches of government. If the presidency has survived the likes of immoral corrupt men like trump, the Court will survive a leak. If Clarence is so concerned, he’s free to resign today.
The bigotry shown by the Democrats directed against Justice Thomas (who is probably our community’s most consistent supporter on the Supreme Court) and Robert Bork is what started the current problems. The Democrats then started to dismantle the filibuster thereby eliminating any incentive to pick judges who could draw broad support.
And Roe v. Wade is probably a big part of the problem. The only other case to resolve a matter by declaring a large number of people to be, for legal purposes, sub-human was “Dred Scott”, which was promptly resolved by having a civil war (the southerners look at population trends and voting results and realized that “Dred Scott” would eventually be reversed, and just as Democrats today can’t live with the idea that “deplorable” babies are human beings, the southerners then couldn’t live with the idea that Blacks were human beings).
Gadolhadorah: What you are insinuating is that a justice cannot seperate his personal convictions with his rulings. If that is true, then the same can be said to each and every Justice sitting on the court, including the liberal justices. So your self-righteous anger should be aimed at the Judicial system as a whole. But, although as humans they definitely have biases, at least we know their judicial philosophy so we have a barometer with which to hold them to and to somewhat counteract this problem. However, with the latest Justice confirmed by the liberals, she (he, them, their, etc..) has refused to expound on her judicial philosophy. So if anything, it’s people like that liberal justice that undermines the court with them being a partisan hack.
Talk about hypocrisy…. and none of the liberal Justices are activist judges? How about all of them? Do you think Jackson will in her lifetime vote even once with the conservatives?
Take a look at how the Equality Act votes went.
Let’s take a tally of how many times the conservatives, including Trojan Roberts crossed the aisle, vs. how many times the liberals did. I don’t think you should be complaining.
> Gadolhadorah
> “HE never recuses himself”
Let’s start with a simple statement by CNBC:
> Clarence Thomas has recused himself 54 times since the 1990’s
The rest of your diatribe may be judged accordingly.
His behavior is ending the trust in the Supreme Court.
Thomas’ past recusals show that he is not ignorant of the rules outlining when federal judges must disqualify themselves from participating in a case.