The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

AS you drive south toward Florida on I-95 just beyond Savannah, there’s a historical marker announcing that near the next exit is the tiny hamlet of Pin Point, Georgia. The marker notes that Pin Point is the birthplace of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. This complex man, appointed by President George H W Bush in 1991 to succeed the first African American to serve on America’s highest court, has often been in the news in the 31 years since his appointment.

Clarence Thomas is black. Bush appointed him to take the place of legendary Thurgood Marshall, who like Ronald Reagan now has a Washington DC-area international airport named after him This is in recognition of his outstanding achievements as a federal judge. You could say that Thomas was named to fill the “black seat” on the high court – and many people did indeed say that. Thomas has been dogged through three decades as an Associate Supreme Court Justice by charges and implications that he is a token, and that his support for conservative ideas and suspicion of affirmative action brand him as an “Uncle Tom,” or a black person who betrays his race for the favour of white people.

On the other hand, a black attorney who has attained great success and prominence over the course of a long career in public service and private corporate practice has told friends that Clarence Thomas made all the difference to him early in his career in St Louis. “Clarence Thomas mentored me when he didn’t need to do so, and his wise counsel helped sustain my career. I feel I owe him for any success I may have achieved.”

Cynics wryly praised Bush and his Republican advisers for promoting diversity on the Court while at the same time appointing a jurist whose obdurate conservatism would lead him to support causes dear to Republican hearts. Many white Americans continue to believe that black Americans generally support Democrats. And that is often true. Blacks increasingly influence national Democratic thinking in numerous policy areas. While there are now more Republican African Americans, arch-conservative black justice Clarence Thomas is still seen as an outlier.

Thomas’ confirmation hearing in 1991 was chaired by then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden, who has since admitted that he mishandled the charges of inappropriate sexual conduct by Thomas toward Anita Hill, also an attorney and a subordinate of Thomas during his time at the federal Equal Opportunity Commission and elsewhere.

The Thomas confirmation process was choppy and interrupted by evidence leaked during Senate hearings. There were rumours and innuendo circulating about the judge, and he lashed out in 1991 about what he felt was the basic unfairness of the hearing he received:

“This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I’m concerned it is a high-tech execution for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kow-tow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

That all happened 31 years ago. Thomas was ultimately confirmed by the Senate and was publicly silent during his first two and one-half decades on the Supreme Court, almost never offering an opinion or even asking a question during public evidence hearings before the court. He has spoken more frequently since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, but his reluctance to speak out has encouraged critics to deride the erudition of this Yale Law School graduate.

It is in that context that Thomas’ return to the front pages in recent weeks must be seen. Now, it is the outspoken views of his wife Ginni that has ignited calls for Thomas, who at 73 will later this year be the oldest justice on the high court, to resign or at least recuse himself from cases stemming from the January 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol building by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the 2020 American presidential election.

Ginni Thomas has long made no secret of her strong right-wing views, and she has often been well-paid to advance them. By some estimates, she has been paid over $1 million by various conservative think tanks or other groups for services rendered. This has occasionally raised public concern, but never like it has done recently. Revelations of her text messages to then- Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows on and about January 6 and her ardent wish that the 2020 election be overturned or nullified have sparked outrage that threatens Thomas’ standing and even tenure on the court.

Y ou’ve probably seen or heard about her texts, in one of which she declared that the 2020 US presidential election results represented “the greatest heist in our history.” She attended the January 6 rally behind the White House when Trump and others incited the assault on the capitol. Then, not too long afterwards, Clarence Thomas cast the only dissenting vote when the Supreme Court considered whether Trump’s and other records could fairly be brought before the congressional commission investigating the events of January 6.

There is a legitimate cause for concern that Clarence Thomas ignored an obvious conflict of interest in that case, especially given the new evidence of his wife’s texts. His failure to properly recuse himself in the case and, perhaps, unwillingness to recuse in the several future cases about January 6 which are likely to come before the Supreme Court, have concerned many pundits and commentators, some of whom are Republicans.

In his defense, Thomas could fall back on the absence of any code of accountability for high court justices’ decisions on recusal or non-recusal from cases. The Supreme Court is subject to the mandate that all federal judges disqualify themselves from disputes where their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” But while lower court judges face fairly specific procedures to ensure impartiality, no such procedures apply to the nation’s highest court.

The contrast is unavoidable between Thomas’ silent, unbending conservatism and the open, articulate, strong and capable appearances of current Biden nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during four days of her confirmation hearings last week. Jackson, who will join Thomas as the court’s black judges when she is confirmed by the Senate next month, seems to be almost everything he isn’t. The comparisons don’t flatter Thomas.

T he national press is proceeding cautiously along the path to calling for Thomas to be impeached or pressured by the chief justice to resign from the court. But some first steps are being taken. Respected national columnists such as The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, have gone further already. Over the weekend, Dowd wrote that “Thomas should never have been put on the court. Now that we know his wife was plotting the overthrow of the government, he should get off or be thrown off. You can’t administer justice when your spouse is running around strategizing for a coup.”

It’s anyone’s guess where this will all lead. But the flow of information being released by the congressional January 6 committee is increasing in volume and in the specificity with which it directly implicates Trump, his associates and followers in a conspiracy to overthrow a valid election, by means of a violent coup if necessary. Ginni Thomas already looks highly supportive of and perhaps even complicit in this. If, as many suspect, more damning information is still to be released, she may face public disgrace.

Clarence Thomas is by all accounts as loyal to his wife as Will Smith revealed himself to be at the Academy Awards on Sunday night when he rushed to the stage to slap Chris Rock across the face for making a joke about Smith’s wife’s hair. If liberal and Democratic pundits really turn up the rhetorical heat on this proud and stubborn black man and his wife, what might he do?

Clarence Thomas surely wouldn’t resign in disgust while a Democrat sits in the White House and the Dems have majorities in both houses of Congress. Or would he?