Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
spent two hours with 14 law students on Holy
Thursday, 2000. He commented on topics ranging
from U.S. v.
Dickerson to why
he does not ask questions from the bench during
oral arguments before the Supreme Court. I was
one of the 14 law students.
The Supreme Court had heard the Dickerson
case the day before. He said he'd heard a female
tv reporter describe the question in Dickerson as
whether Miranda would be overturned by the law. He showed impatience with her
ignorance and said, "It's not about
overturning Miranda! The court invited
other methods of determining voluntariness."
[The decision, June 26, 2000; Scalia &
Thomas' dissent]
Justice Thomas said that the press has
criticized Justice Antonin Scalia for asking
questions during oral arguments before the Court.
Some journalists have called Justice Scalia
argumentative. Some of those same journalists
have criticized Justice Thomas for not asking
questions during oral arguments. He said, "I
think if we invite a person in, we should at
least listen to what he has to say." In
words that sounded close to what I'd once heard
from a Catholic priest, he said that you should
really listen if you are listening to a person.
If you are thinking of your next question as the
person is speaking, some of your attention is not
on listening to the person.
He further explained that he had not
asked questions in high school, in college, or in
law school. "When I was asked a question, I
answered it, but I did not ask questions."
He explained that he had grown up in a rural area
in the South where there remained a major
influence of an African language. As he grew up,
many in that area spoke a mixture of English and
this old language. As a consequence, while he
learned to speak standard English-only, he would
edit his speech and his words in his brain before
speaking. This encouraged him to do more
listening than speaking.
His words about the press were,
understandably, not all positive. He wondered
aloud how journalists would like to have the
tables turned on them, to have massive
investigative forces turned loose on any one
among the corps of working journalists. He also
wondered whether the purpose of the First
Amendment was to allow the likes of nude table
dancing.
He sympathized with us as we said we'd be
facing final exams beginning on May Day. He
explained that, when he was at Yale Law School,
he took notes on top of notes and had books
filled with multicolored highlighting and notes
in margins. When he would begin preparing for
exams, it became a case of reducing the notes
over and over until he'd reduced the notes to one
three-by-five card for each class. He sees the
object as stating the complex in simple form.
He talked about the Commerce Clause (art.
I, sec. 8, cl. 3). He's not fond of how that
clause in the Constitution has been used to
expand the federal government's power. He cited
the 1995 U.S. v. Lopez case; he likes that decision. He talked
about "aggregation theory" and the 1942
Wickard v.
Filburn case that
turned every blade of grass in this nation into
something that could be controlled by the
Commerce Clause. "It doesn't make
sense." He said he wants to bring common
sense to the court.
Justice Thomas had entered after we'd
been assembled in a large, dark room at the
Supreme Court. He spoke warmly and cordially.
Then he said he would take questions. We had not
expected that. We'd been told this was only a
"photo op" to make up for those of us
who had not been so lucky as to get our pictures
taken with Justice Thomas at the Red Mass Brunch
in October 1999. At first, no one spoke; there
was no question, perhaps because we were in awe.
I intentionally did not jump in to speak
immediately so as not to seem pushy. (Me? Pushy?)
However, no one gave a sign of speaking, and I
thought, "How insulting that NO ONE would
ask a question." I then asked about the
Supreme Court's new web page. Justice Thomas
talked about the 'net in general, about
computers, and about the court intranet. He said
he does not like reading briefs off his computer,
but he likes the ease with which files can be
transferred. He prefers "hard copy"
print outs of documents.
We students ranged from first-years to
those ready to graduate in three weeks. There
were, perhaps, four first-years. We had recently
read the 1996 Virginia
Military Institute
case. One student asked about the case,
acknowledging that Justice Thomas had recused
(excused) himself from the case because Justice
Thomas' son (now 27) had been a student at VMI.
Justice Thomas said he thought it would have been
better to have waited for the state of Virginia
to realize it was time to bring VMI into the
world of coed education. By chance, among us
students was a young woman who had graduated from
Mary Baldwin, the school where Virginia had begun
a program for women that was to be comparable to
the VMI program for men. Also by chance, this
young woman was the college friend of a young
woman who had dated Justice Thomas' son.
As I've read Supreme Court decisions,
I've wondered about some of their
"formulas" for making decisions.
Justice Thomas surprised me when he talked about
making decisions as a Justice. He said, "You
begin with the formulaic method. Then, you begin
to question the formulas." There are
formulas for determining "substantial
effect"; for deciding whether a law will be
judged under strict scrutiny, heightened
scrutiny, or rational basis; for deciding whether
something is a fundamental right; for determining
whether there is a compelling state interest to
infringe on a right. They are all formulas that
seem to work at obscuring how or why a judge
might really make a decision. Here was a Supreme
Court Justice questioning the formulas.
By chance, Justice Thomas and I share a
friend. When it became clear the questioning from
the students was at an end, I again took
advantage of the quiet and offered him a
"hello" from my friend. I had not
understood in advance how completely Justice
Thomas would count my friend as his friend. My
friend is a modest, gracious woman from Missouri.
After Justice Thomas graduated from Yale Law in
1974, there weren't a lot of offers coming to a
black man, even one who was a Yale Law graduate.
He accepted an offer from the Missouri Attorney
General's office. There, he met my friend and her
husband. She was a legal secretary in the AG's
office, and her husband was a young attorney out
of U. of MO. My friend had spoken positively of
Justice Thomas for years. As the press had tried
to savage him, she had made it clear the press
did not understand who Clarence Thomas was. She'd
written him once, but she and her husband had
moved soon after. I was surprised when Justice
Thomas so clearly wanted to be able to contact
these old friends. Then I had to tell him that
one of those two old friends had died 18 months
ago. Justice Thomas' face looked sad, and he
said, "We hung out together when we were
kids." What he meant was "when we were
young lawyers," but the word he used was
"kids." I told him his old friend had
died of a heart attack on the way to volunteering
for the Boy Scouts. Justice Thomas said his own
brother had died of a heart attack about the same
time.
The old nuns used to say, "Tell me
who your friends are, and I'll tell you who you
are." While I was impressed with Justice
Thomas in the two hours I spent with him, what
impressed me most was who his friend was, and he
made it clear this now-dead man had been his
friend. Our late mutual friend was a Missouri
farm boy with a ready laugh who grew up to be a
lawyer filled with integrity. At his memorial
service, the church was filled with Boy Scouts
and over 500 other friends. A few men got up to
speak about the lawyer who'd died on his way to
volunteer with the Boy Scouts. One looked
familiar; he had the face of President
Eisenhower; it was Ike's grandson. But the one
who best described this friend of Justice Thomas
was the Boy Scout leader who told a little story:
Unlike what we imagine,
Heaven and Hell are really side by side,
divided by a fence. God and the devil
have an agreement to maintain the fence
jointly. One day, God found the fence in
disrepair and called the devil over to
tell the devil it was his turn to fix the
fence. The devil had only excuses, and
God said, "Now, you don't want this
to go to litigation, do you?" And
the devil answered, "You couldn't
find a lawyer on your side." |
Then the Boy Scout leader paused and
added, "Today, God has a lawyer on his
side."
For 16 years, I knew this man whom the
Boy Scout leader praised. I knew him well, and I
would agree with the Boy Scout leader's
description of him. Justice Thomas made clear he
had been this man's friend. "Tell me who
your friends are, and I'll tell you who you
are."
April 22, 2000
Alice Marie Beard
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Off-site
links:
Dickerson,
4th Cir.
Miranda
18 USC 3501
Dickerson
Lopez
Wickard
VMI

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![Justice Clarence Thomas [photo by AMB]](justice.jpg) |
Justice
Clarence Thomas
Two other
photos of Justice Thomas
are at this web site:
CLICK ONE
CLICK TWO
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stories
& genealogy
with care,
by Alice Marie Beard,
Bethesda, MD |
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Anyone is welcome to
link to my words. You are welcome
to link. You are not welcome to
lift, to preserve, and/or to
distribute en masse.
The copyright is mine.
For permission to quote, write
Alice Marie
Beard |
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Kessler
Freedman's
'Political Site of the Day,'
January 1, 2001 |
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AliceMarieBeard.com |
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