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Celebrating Clarence Thomas’s 25 Years on the Court
Once a party of ideas, the GOP has degenerated into being a party of personalities. Nothing shows this more clearly than the career of Clarence Thomas, whom a Republican president of moderate sensibilities nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court 25 years ago this month. Whereas Donald Trump has taken liberal positions on everything from the minimum wage to the Second Amendment, Thomas has over the years articulated a robust version of conservatism rooted in our nation’s founding principles and in the natural rights of the individual. Trump appeals to raw passions; Thomas talks to hearts and minds.
Thomas’s quarter century on the Court stands for a few simple propositions: The Constitution means today what it meant at the time of its ratification. It creates a limited national government bound strictly by a separation of powers and a balance with the authority of sovereign states. Thomas rejects social engineering in favor of individual liberty grounded in natural law. In his dissents, he has held true to this understanding of the Constitution even if it has meant casting aside fashionable opinion and decades of judicial precedent and earning the criticism of political and media elites.
No official in any branch of the federal government holds more-deeply-considered conservative values. Thomas thinks that the Constitution protects natural rights, economic freedom, and private civil society from government meddling. He rejects race-based affirmative action, controls on speech or property, and bureaucratic intervention into private conduct. He would allow religious groups more participation in public life while protecting them from the heavy hand of government regulation, and he would protect the Second Amendment right for civilians to bear firearms.
By recalling our nation to its founding principles, Justice Thomas will continue to lead the battle for a renewal of fundamental limits on government and for the protection of the natural liberties of the individual.
Published in Law
Another 25 years would be good.
Why can’t we talk about a contemporary hero and exemplar like Justice Thomas without almost immediately slamming Trump. I’m going to remove my Ricochet bookmark for a while…
Thank you. Even if one disagrees with his view of the law, his quarter century on the court deserves better than to be marked by the dreadful HBO movie Confirmation, which took Anita Hill’s side in a cloak of faux-neutrality.
I can certainly understand why Trump supporters wouldn’t want to hear much from conservatives over the next few months.
Indeed. This website has been gorging itself on sour grapes since Trump secured the nomination.
Like it or not, the Trump Thomas comparison was a good one. But this is about Thomas, a man who deserves our respect and thanks.
My second favorite living American. Congratulations on the Silver anniversary Justice Thomas.
I can’t even imagine what your comment means.
Perhaps the clearest thinker and writer on the court in recent decades. And he’s almost always right, too.
Thanks John, I’m always impressed by Justice Thomas’s steadfast integrity.
It’s poignant for me that our republic has so few bulwarks of such strength.
If only there were nine of him.
I am sure there are more like him but the system won’t let them advance.
I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I always preferred Thomas to Scalia.
I don’t want to speak ill of the living, but I always preferred either of them to Ginsburg.
Thanks, John. I’ve heard rumor that he’s thinking of retirement. That would be a real blow for the constitution and our country. He’s a great man.
Excellent commentary by Professor Yu as part of an excellent series at NR on Justice Thomas.
“This metaphysical suggestion (Natural Right) is vulnerable to the Nietzschean suggestions that both God and human rights are superstitions.” Richard Rorty.
Professor Yu, and the other commentators at NR, miss the fundamental reason why Judge Thomas’ jurisprudence is different. Yes, Judge Thomas accepts the concept of Natural Right, and Natural Law. The more salient, implicit point is that most (virtually all) other Justices, and the legal profession in America today, utterly reject the concepts of Natural Right and Natural Law. Why? They adhere to a view of the Human as something entirely different than the Founders’ concept of the Human. For “Pragmatists” human existence has no intrinsic value, meaning or significance. And they believe that anyone who believes differently is all but deranged. Thus Thomas is ridiculed, and ostracized, in a similar fashion to the Straussians, who understood the significance of Natural Right. Rorty, the dean of American Pragmatists, like all of the Progressives who base their politics on Rorty’s nihilist philosophy (Obama calls himself a “Pragmatist”), reject Natural Right. This has led Justices, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose view governs American jurisprudence today, to conceive of Law as arbitrary rule making, nothing more, nothing less. This is a vastly diminished view of the Human compared to the Founders. America, as originally constituted, no longer exists, as the founding concepts are rejected. Clarence Thomas’ is a voice crying in the wilderness.
I like Clarence Thomas because he accepted the assistance of government affirmative-action programs, and didn’t let it buy his political views on affirmative action or anything else. Leftists hate that, as it threatens their entire M.O. We need more people with that kind of integrity.
Contrasts are instructive at times. Interesting that no one is actually disputing The veracity of Mr. Yoo’s comments on Donald.