While modern day liberals simply assume Clarence Thomas is dumb, those who actually do some research consistently find something different:
My own evaluation of Justice Thomas’ work is based primarily on his opinions in ERISA and employee benefits cases, the area of law in which I practice. It is a good test of jurisprudential acumen, for no member of the Court has much ERISA expertise. Ability to make sense when venturing into unfamiliar legal terrain is a vital skill for Justices, who are the final arbiters of all statutory and common law but cannot possibly possess antecedent mastery of the whole.
By this criterion, Justice Thomas is one of the Court’s best jurists. His ERISA opinions are, with rare exceptions, clear, pithy and accurately reasoned. I particularly recommend for perusal his majority opinions in Hughes Aircraft Co. v. Jacobson (1999), which swept away years of confusion about the meaning of ERISA’s exclusive purpose rule, Egelhoff v. Egelhoff (2001), which strengthened and clarified ERISA’s prohibition against state interference with employee benefit plan administration, and Aetna Health Inc. v. Davila (2004), which reduced the murkiness of the Court’s conflicting rulings on the scope of ERISA preemption, his dissents in John Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Harris Trust & Savings Bank (1993) and Varity Corporation v. Howe (1996), and his concurrence in Raymond B. Yates, M.D., P.C. Profit Sharing Plan v. Hendon (2004), where he catches a fellow Justice in egregious circular reasoning and displays his talent for close reading of the statutory text. I don’t think that any fair observer, including one who disagreed with Justice Thomas’ conclusions, can deny that he argues well and writes forcefully. The contrast with many of his colleagues’ blurry, meandering forays into employee benefits law is striking.
The lawyer also gives other reasons why Thomas is not, as the new Democrat party leader in the senate put it, ‘an embarrasment’, but a first rate judge.
I ask those reading this why it’s so easy and common for modern day liberals to simply assume Clarence Thomas is ‘an embarrasment’ to the court? Putting Liberal racism aside for the moment, don’t you think affirmative action has a lot to do with it? If one of your strongest goals is to push through legislation that gives minorities ‘handicap points‘, wouldn’t that eventually lead you to assume they are, well, handicapped?
Something to think about.
Update: More here.
I have been looking for an overview of Clarence Thomas’ rulings so I can judge this man for myself. Can you help me by telling me more with less legaleas.
Do a search for Thomas on my blog, there are many many links to peoples opinion of him.
If, on the other hand, you want to read him in his own words, there should be more than enough of his rulings online.
It’s a turd!!!
Clarence Thomas in Hamdi vs Rumsfeld
Question left open:
If I wipe my ass on the bill of rights in order to demonstrate via circumspection that toilet paper is not a constitutional guarantee for a man about to take it up the ass from the Man and indefinitely and with no protections, rights, or remedies, what is in fact my first principle of jurisprudence?
Answer:
No one has a clue — indeed, I shit on the whole bill of rights when I write a dissent like the one I wrote in Hamdi vs Rumsfeld. The best part…the turd will live on long after I’m gone for future turd lovers and those who keep trying to compare my turd fetish with jurisprudence and the work of my peers and predecessors.