Posted on 02/06/2010 11:47:55 AM PST by La Enchiladita
GULFPORT — Students and faculty members at Stetson University College of Law were treated Tuesday to one of the rarest sights in American jurisprudence:
A U.S. Supreme Court justice riffing on everything from his disappearing hairline to his co-workers to that fancy show his wife dragged him to one night. What's it called again? Oh, yeah: opera.
Live from Gulfport, it's Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.
"We just sit there and ask questions that don't need to be asked," said Thomas, playfully describing the nation's highest court.
It was an inside legal joke that may require background for those who don't regularly follow the high court. Thomas is famous for his silence during oral arguments. By some accounts he hasn't asked a question in three years.
The justices are a recalcitrant group, Thomas even more so after his searing confirmation hearings two decades ago. His public appearances are rare. He hardly ever speaks to the press.
Yet there is one setting where Thomas is the most accessible of the bunch: in front of law students.
That was evident in Tuesday's free-wheeling and candid discussion, the culmination of his two-day visit regaling students and professors at the school.
...Thomas has a passion for reaching out to law students, said Stetson professor Michael Allen. What few public appearances the justice makes are often at law schools.
"It is difficult to convey how rare of an experience it is for any American law student to have with one of the Supreme Court justices," Allen said.
(Excerpt) Read more at tampabay.com ...
"If 10 of you got together to speak, you would have a First Amendment right to speak and a First Amendment right to free association. Now what if you wanted to form a corporation?"
"They don't care that I don't judge a case as a Catholic," he said. "But they yell because I don't judge a case as a black man."
Politics, he said, is why he stopped going to the annual address. "It has become so partisan, it's really uncomfortable for a judge," he said. "There's a lot of things you don't hear on the broadcast. "You have catcalls and people muttering under their breath."
Great article
if i didn’t hate Dems b efore I would hate them now for the disrespect they display for this fine man.
Is there video of this speech anywhere?
http://www.freedomslighthouse.com/2010/02/justice-clarence-thomas-hits-nyt-and.html
http://www.wusf.usf.edu/player/Player.php?itemurl=http://www.wusf.usf.edu/pbcore/7161/full_audio.xml
The Clarence Thomas hearings years ago was one of the ugliest
events in American history.
sorry, just audio
Renquist was not fond of wasting time arguing legal points when they were all together in their private meetings, so he insisted that most of the arguing back and forth between the justices be in written form on their own time.
According to the book, one of the first cases Thomas participated in, He was able to turn Scalias' opinion around to His point of view.
When the ruling was made public, everyone assumed Thomas was simply going along with Scalia, but the truth was it was Thomas who persuaded Scalia.
And Thomas thinks the oral arguments that occur in open court are mostly showboating, because the justices have already made up their minds.
And some cannot speak in sentences.
ML/NJ
Thanks. Audio is good!
Am I the only one who doesn’t understand your post? As I read it, Thomas was telling an “in joke” with that quote. What does your comment mean, thanks.
Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech that I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said: “ ‘I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would . . . strike down laws restricting property right.’ ” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”
http://article.nationalreview.com/366910/joe-for-veep/kathryn-jean-lopez
I’d like to read that book. I’ll put it on my list.
My American History teacher in high school let us watch the hearings in class. I remember vividly thinking for the very first time while watching those hearings, there must be a very subversive, anti-american element in Washington that wouldn’t want this man to ascend to his seat.
It was the first time I realized such a malevolent power existed. I guess you could say it changed the way I view politics, for life.
Wasn’t Biden one of the MCs at that high-tech lynching?
the “borking” of Robert Bork and then Clarence Thomas helped me to realize just how many preening liberals are devoid of character and decency
before that I naively thought that most people in our public life were committed on some level to honest, respectful disagreements on issues
but those episodes showed that Teddy Kennedy and his ilk had zero scruples about dishonestly trashing distinguished jurists for political ends
the “borking” of Robert Bork and then Clarence Thomas helped me to realize just how many preening liberals are devoid of character and decency
before that I naively thought that most people in our public life were committed on some level to honest, respectful disagreements on issues
but those episodes showed that Teddy Kennedy and his ilk had zero scruples about dishonestly trashing distinguished jurists for political ends
A friend of mine is a lawyer, and while in law school he read many of Thomas' decisions. He said he was shocked at how good they were--and he liked Thomas to begin with.
Truly the underrated SC justice. He's been marginalized by the press for obvious reasons, which is a shame.
I have always admired him.
nearly all of the real racists in contemporary American life are liberals
when we look at hard they try to destroy and/or ignore and marginalize accomplished blacks who are not politically correct -— we see over and over that they despise any black who does not say on the liberal plantation
don’t dare think for yourself if you are a “person of color” because liberals have already determined what you are allowed to think about everything
Clarence is a class act. And his autobiography is worth reading. (That’s very high praise, when you think of all the millions of books there are out there, 99% of which aren’t...)
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