Not Doubting Thomas
"Thomas says Constitution forbids racial preference" reads the headline. He doesn't quite say it in the article, but I'll take their word for it. This was from a speech Clarence Thomas made to leaders of historically black colleges.
Knowing Thomas, this isn't exactly news, but here's what intrigued me. Should judges go out in public and say what they believe? Some fear it'll look like they're prejudiced and not able to be impartial when they hear cases.
Except that they do have these beliefs--does it make any different whether or not they state them publicly? (Certainly a lot of people want to hear them state their beliefs during Senate hearings.) And when they write their opinions, they let us know how they interpret the constitution in an official public manner--Thomas speech is really just another kind of dicta.
I believe in demystifying judges. I know they try to be fair and impartial, but they have strong beliefs and everyone knows it. Or at least, everyone should know it.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:17 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting tidbit from a WSJ Interview in March of this year:
It is the Plessy dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan to which Mr. Thomas points for an example of a Justice putting his personal predilections aside to keep faith with the Constitution. Harlan was a Kentucky aristocrat and former slaveowner, although he was also a Unionist who fought for the North during the Civil War. A man of his time, he believed in white superiority, if not supremacy, and wrote in Plessy that the "white race" would continue to be dominant in the United States "in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth and in power . . . for all time, if it remains true to its great heritage and holds fast to the principles of constitutional liberty."
"But," Harlan continued, "in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens."
That, for Mr. Thomas, is the "great 'But,'" where Harlan's intellectual honesty trumped his personal prejudice, causing Mr. Thomas to describe Harlan as his favorite justice and even a role model. For both of them, justice is truly blind to everything but the law.
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