Book Note Justice Thomas’S Inconsistent Originalism
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Reading Clarence Thomas
Columbia Law School Scholarship Archive Faculty Scholarship Faculty Publications 2004 Reading Clarence Thomas Kendall Thomas Columbia Law School, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Kendall Thomas, Reading Clarence Thomas, 18 NAT'L BLACK L. J. 224 (2004). Available at: https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2172 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Publications at Scholarship Archive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of Scholarship Archive. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ESSAY READING CLARENCE THOMAS Kendall Thomas* The state is INHERENTLY racial, every state institution is a RACIAL institu- tion, and the entire social order is equilabrated (unstably) by the state to preserve the prevailing racial order. -Omi & Winant' Several years ago, a special issue of The New Yorker entitled "Black in America" included an extraordinary profile of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.2 Authored by Jeffrey Rosen, the article begins with an account of Justice Thomas's interventions in two of the most important cases decided during the Court's previous term. In the first of these cases, Missouri v. Jenkins, the Court was called upon to define the constitutional scope and limits of the federal judicial power to address racial concentra- tion in Kansas City's public schools through salary increases and the crea- tion of magnet programs.3 In the second case, Adarand v. -
Justices' Profiles Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School
College of William & Mary Law School William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Supreme Court Preview Conferences, Events, and Lectures 1995 Section 1: Justices' Profiles Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School Repository Citation Institute of Bill of Rights Law at the William & Mary Law School, "Section 1: Justices' Profiles" (1995). Supreme Court Preview. 35. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/preview/35 Copyright c 1995 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/preview WARREN E. BURGER IS DEAD AT 87 Was Chief Justice for 17 Years Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company The New York Times June 26, 1995, Monday Linda Greenhouse Washington, June 25 - Warren E. Burger, who retired to apply like an epithet -- overruled no major in 1986 after 17 years as the 15th Chief Justice of the decisions from the Warren era. United States, died here today at age 87. The cause It was a further incongruity that despite Chief was congestive heart failure, a spokeswoman for the Justice Burger's high visibility and the evident relish Supreme Court said. with which he used his office to expound his views on An energetic court administrator, Chief Justice everything from legal education to prison Burger was in some respects a transitional figure management, scholars and Supreme Court despite his tenure, the longest for a Chief Justice in commentators continued to question the degree to this century. He presided over a Court that, while it which he actually led the institution over which he so grew steadily more conservative with subsequent energetically presided. -
Clarence Thomas Takes Oath As Court's 106Th Justice
THE SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOLUME XII NUMBER 4,1991 Clarence Thomas Takes Oath as Court's 106th Justice CourtesyLois Long, Officeof the Curator of the Court In a ceremony held on the South Lawn ofthe White House on October 18,1991, Judge Clarence Thomas took the officialoath of a federal government official prior to becoming the 106th member of the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Byron R. White administered this oath. The judicial oath was a administered by ChiefJustice Willijun H. Rehnquist at a private fi&QSpfM ceremony on October 23, 1991 so that he might commence his work on the Court. A more traditional ceremonywasheld in the Supreme Court Chamber on November 1, 1991 in which Chief Justice Rehnquist readministered the oath to Justice Thomas who then assumed his seat on the Bench. Courtesy Lois Long, Office of the Curatorof the Court The ChiefJustice looks on as Justice Thomas signs his judicial oath of officeas part ofthe ceremony held at the Supreme Court on November 1,1991. Justice Thomas was sworn in at a public ceremony held in the Supreme Court Chamber. Justice Thomas fills the seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall. Justice Thomas was bornonJune23, 1948, inPinPoint, Georgia. Hisearly childhood years were spent in Georgia where he attended parochial school much ofthe time. After briefly attending Immaculate Conception Seminary in Mis souri , Justice Thomas entered Holy Cross College in Worcester, At a White House ceremony, Judge Clarence Thomas (left Massachusetts. He graduated from Holy Cross with honors, foreground) takes the olTiclal oath of office required of all finishing ninth in his class and then entered Yale Law School, government officials. -
Critical Constitutionalism Now
Fordham Law Review Volume 75 Issue 2 Article 6 2006 Critical Constitutionalism Now Louis Michael Seidman Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Louis Michael Seidman, Critical Constitutionalism Now, 75 Fordham L. Rev. 575 (2006). Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol75/iss2/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. It has been accepted for inclusion in Fordham Law Review by an authorized editor of FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Critical Constitutionalism Now Cover Page Footnote Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center. Thanks to Alex Aleinikoff, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Girardeau Spann, Mark Tushnet, and participants at the Fordham Law School symposium A New Constitutional Order? for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. This article is available in Fordham Law Review: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol75/iss2/6 CRITICAL CONSTITUTIONALISM NOW Louis Michael Seidman* In the fall of 1999, Mark Tushnet published a celebrated foreword to the Supreme Court edition of the Harvard Law Review arguing that the Rehnquist Court's decisions could be understood as part of an era marked by divided government and sharply reduced ambitions for the transformative potential of constitutional law. 1 Almost exactly two years later, on September 11, 2001, airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. For the next three or four years, Tushnet's characterization of our times seemed exactly backward: We appeared to be in the middle of an era of united government and of quite dramatic constitutional transformation. -
The Truth About Clarence Thomas and the Need for New Black Leadership
THE TRUTH ABOUT CLARENCE THOMAS AND THE NEED FOR NEW BLACK LEADERSHIP Stephen F. Smith* It has been almost nine years since Associate Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the 106th Justice of the United States Supreme Court. During that time, he has come under sharp and unrelenting criticism from almost all segments of the media.1 Indeed, some of his harshest attacks hdve come from the civil rights community, which one would have expected to welcome the ascent of a black American to the pinnacle of his profession. For example, at the 1995 convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP"), Justice Thomas was repeatedly called a "pimp" and a "traitor."2 Retired U.S. Court of Appeals Judge A. Leon Higginbotham, whom some in the civil rights community had hoped would succeed the late Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, entered the fray in the years prior to his death, arguing in a recent speech that Justice 3 Thomas is "dragging blacks back to the oppression of the past." Is all this part of some personal vendetta against Justice Thomas? Maybe in part, but far more is at work here. Clearly, the debate about Justice Thomas (which has almost uniformly been one-sided and mean- spirited) involves more than a referendum on the man's character and jurisprudential views. Simply put, the relentless assaults on the Justice are part and parcel of a larger struggle for the hearts and minds of black America, a veritable last gasp of those who have traditionally viewed themselves as leaders of the black community to maintain their hold on power and of the liberal Democrats to maintain control over their core constituency. -
Defending Korematsu?: Reflections on Civil Liberties in Wartime
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Georgetown Law Scholarly Commons Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2003 Defending Korematsu?: Reflections on Civil Liberties in Wartime Mark V. Tushnet Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected] Copyright 2003 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System; Reprinted by permission of the Wisconsin Law Review. Permitted use is limited to the work described above and does not include the right to grant to others permission to photocopy or otherwise reproduce this material except for copies permitted under the Copyright Act. This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/246 2003 Wis. L. Rev. 273-307 (2003) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, and the Jurisprudence Commons GEORGETOWN LAW Faculty Publications February 2010 Defending Korematsu?: Reflections on Civil Liberties in Wartime* 2003 Wis. L. Rev. 273-307 (2003) Mark V. Tushnet Professor of Law Georgetown University Law Center [email protected] This paper can be downloaded without charge from: Scholarly Commons: http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/246/ SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=368323 Posted with permission of the author * Copyright 2003 by The Board of Regents -
Mark Tushnet: a Personal Reminiscence
Georgetown University Law Center Scholarship @ GEORGETOWN LAW 2001 Mark Tushnet: A Personal Reminiscence Louis Michael Seidman Georgetown University Law Center, [email protected] This paper can be downloaded free of charge from: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/905 90 Geo. L.J. 127-130 (2001) This open-access article is brought to you by the Georgetown Law Library. Posted with permission of the author. Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub Part of the Legal Studies Commons SYMPOSIUM Justice, Democracy, and Humanity: A Celebration of the Work of Mark Tushnet Mark Tushnet: A Personal Reminiscence Louis MICHAEL SEIDMAN* The papers in this Symposium pay tribute to Mark Tushnet's astonishing energy, influence, originality, and sheer brilliance as a scholar. As important and interesting as they are, they do not come close to capturing the breadth of his work. How could they? My most recent check of the online version of the Index of Legal Periodicals reveals 242 articles and book reviews published by Tushnet since roughly 1980.1 Georgetown's Edward Bennett Williams Li- brary online catalogue lists an additional forty books and book chapters written by Tushnet. In this short Essay, I will not try to summarize this incredible output or detail the ways in which it has influenced the development of legal thought. I wish the others who attempt that task the best of luck. Instead, I feel much more confident in my ability to say something about a topic that is in some ways more important-the kind of person Mark Tushnet is. -
Supreme Court Riddle: Who Voted to Hear the Sports- Betting Case?
Supreme Court Riddle: Who Voted To Hear The Sports- Betting Case? 22ND FEB 2018 | WRITTEN BY: TONY BATT The mystery surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear New Jersey’s appeal of a federal sports-betting ban is almost as intriguing as how the court will rule on the case later this year. Out of 10,000 petitions for certiorari every year, the Supreme Court agrees to hear about 80 appeals, or less than 1 percent, according to the website FindLaw. For an appeal to overcome these astronomical odds, four justices must vote to hear the case. The votes are revealed in a private conference of the nine members of the Supreme Court. The least senior justice begins the voting process which continues according to seniority until the most senior justice’s vote is recorded. The votes are included in notes taken by the least senior justice who gives them to the clerk of the Supreme Court after the conference. New Jersey failed to gain four votes when the Supreme Court denied the state’s first sports-betting appeal on June 23, 2014. But three years and four days later, the Supreme Court announced it would hear New Jersey’s second sports-betting appeal and a ruling is expected before the end of June. The only justice who did not participate in the 2014 vote is Neil Gorsuch, who succeeded the deceased Antonin Scalia last year. Gorsuch seems to be at the top of the list of justices who might have voted to hear New Jersey’s appeal. -
Restoring the Balance of Powers
“The Founders intentionally placed the power of the government in the hands of the people via their representation in Congress. Yet for many years, Congress has slowly ceded its authority to the executive branch. Rather than taking the time to properly legislate, Congress has passed bills that lack detail and provide gross regulatory authority to unelected federal bureaucrats. Congress seems keen to participate in opaque rulemaking processes, begging bureaucrats to implement policies that align with congressional intent. We’ve seen the effects of this trend in every policy area, from immigration to environmental policies, and health care to foreign aid. It’s time for change. “One of the core tenants of my office mission is to restore the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches to more closely resemble what the Founders intended. I am grateful to FreedomWorks for raising awareness of this need and for the work they do reduce the size of government and promote individual liberty.” Congressman Andy Biggs (AZ-05) “The idea that the federal government is composed of three coequal branches is false. While it is essential that the three branches hold each other accountable, Congress was always intended to be the most powerful for a simple reason: it is the branch that is closest to the people, and is the only branch organized to encourage debate and compromise on the most pressing issues facing America. The founders of this great nation never imagined that Members of Congress would so willingly give away their power and responsibility, but that is exactly what we have done for a century. -
Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh's Senate Confirmation
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 5-2020 Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the American Politics Commons, Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, and the Social Influence and Political Communication Commons Citation Johnson, A. (2020). Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings ot the Supreme Court. Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3621 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sex, Stress, and the Supreme Court: Verbal and Vocalic Analysis of Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate Confirmation Hearings to the Supreme Court A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Political Science by Alexandra Johnson University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, 2018 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, 2018 May 2020 University of Arkansas This thesis is approved for the recommendation to the Graduate Council. ___________________________________ Patrick A. Stewart, Ph.D. Thesis Director ___________________________________ ___________________________________ William Schreckhise, Ph.D. Karen Sebold, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member 1 Abstract This study analyzed the relationship between verbal and nonverbal vocalic communication patterns exhibited by Brett Kavanaugh, now a sitting Justice on the U.S. -
Dispatch No. 26 - United States
DISPATCH NO. 26 - UNITED STATES “THE LANDMARK BOSTOCK DECISION: SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER IDENTITY BIAS IN EMPLOYMENT CONSTITUTE SEX DISCRIMINATION UNDER FEDERAL LAW” by Susan Bisom-Rapp† August 2020 INTRODUCTION On June 15, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States (Supreme Court or SCOTUS) issued a widely anticipated decision holding that the federal statutory ban on sex discrimination in employment includes a prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. A landmarK case in every sense of the term, Bostock v. Clayton County (Bostock) 1 is important for a number of reasons. Besides being a significant victory for civil rights advocates, LGBTQIA 2 people, and their allies, the 6- 3 decision was notable for its discussion of an ascendant theory of statutory interpretation, the majority’s well-reasoned analysis of the principles of causation, and the fact that a conservative judicial appointee of President Donald Trump authored the majority opinion. The decision also underscores the value of a carefully constructed LGBTQIA rights litigation strategy that was decades in the maKing. Perhaps most importantly, BostocK lays the groundwork for nationwide protection of sexual minorities from † Susan Bisom-Rapp is Distinguished Professor in Residence at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California during the fall 2020 term. She is also Professor of Law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and served as its Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Scholarship for academic years 2016-2020. She holds JSD and LLM degrees from Columbia University, earned her JD from the University of California at Berkeley, and holds a BS from Cornell University. -
Clarence Thomas PART ONE
The Man Who Replaced the Great Justice Thurgood Marshall Clarence Thomas PART ONE The Trump Acolyte at the Supreme Court SECTION ONE Clarence Thomas Has His Own Constitution By Jeffrey Toobin June 30, 2016 SOURCE: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/clarence-thomas-has-his-own-constitution This year’s Supreme Court term abounded in so much drama—the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the tie votes among the remaining Justices, the liberal victories in the final days—that it was possible to miss a curious subplot: the full flowering of Justice Clarence Thomas’s judicial eccentricity. Since his stormy confirmation, in 1991, Thomas has been the target of much unfair criticism. Some have argued, for Page 1 of 15 example, that his years of silence during oral arguments meant he was not doing much work at all. In fact, Thomas is the most prolific opinion writer on the Court—and that is especially true this year. According to statistics compiled by Professor Steve Vladeck, of the University of Texas Law School, Thomas wrote opinions in thirty-eight of the sixty- two cases the Justices decided in the 2015-16 term. That’s twice as many as Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, like Thomas, and the next-most active writer on the court. Likewise, Thomas’s critics have made the condescending charge that he was just a blind follower of Scalia, an idea that the results this year also rebut. The truth is that Thomas’s view of the Constitution is highly idiosyncratic. Indeed, one reason he wrote so many opinions (often solo dissents and concurrences) was that no other Justice, including Scalia, shared his views.