Clarence Thomas on Law, Rights and Morality ---- By Dinesh D'Souza
What kind of justice would Clarence Thomas, President Bush's nominee to fill the Supreme Court seat vacated by Thurgood Marshall, be? In a series of interviews with me a few weeks prior to his nomination, Mr. Thomas echoed themes that run through his articles and speeches over the past decade. -- "I don't believe in quotas. America was founded on a philosophy of individual rights, not group rights. The civil rights movement was at its greatest when it proclaimed the highest principles on which this country was founded -- principles such as the Declaration of Independence which were betrayed in the case of blacks and other minorities."   -- "I believe that society is now in a position to vigorously enforce equal rights for all Americans. . . . But I believe in compensation for actual victims, not for people whose only claim to victimization is that they are members of a historically oppressed group." -- "America should not fall into the trap of blaming all the problems faced by blacks or other minorities on others. We are not beggars or objects of charity. We don't get smarter just because we sit next to white people in class, and we don't progress just because society is ready with handouts. As a people, we need to find solutions to problems through independence, perseverance and integrity. As a society, we should develop better policies to deal with the underclass than the failed solutions of the past." While the views of President Bush's first Supreme Court nominee, David Souter, were virtually unknown before his confirmation, the 43-year-old Mr. Thomas has boldly articulated his vision of constitutional law, both as a judge -- he now sits on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the nation's second-highest bench -- and, before that, as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for eight years. "Basically the job of a judge is to figure out what the law says, not what he wants it to say," Mr. Thomas told me. "There is a difference between the role of a judge and that of a policy maker. {Judge Robert} Bork was right about that, no question. Judging requires a certain impartiality." At the same time, "impartiality is not the same thing as indifference. This isn't law school speculation. When I hear a case, I know damn well that something is going to happen as a result of what I decide. People's lives are affected. Sometimes a man's life depends on the outcome. And these are people looking to me, to the judge, to figure out what's just, to correctly apply the law. That's not a responsibility I take lightly. No way." Many of Mr. Thomas's critics have taken his unconcealed admiration for Ronald Reagan, his former boss, and Robert Bork, his predecessor on the D.C. Circuit, as evidence that Mr. Thomas shares their philosophy of jurisprudence. But in fact, a careful reading of his articles and speeches reveals a different sort of judicial conservatism. Writing in the Howard Law Journal in 1987, Mr. Thomas argued for what he called a "natural law" or "higher law" mode of judging, in which the judge examines not only the text of the Constitution or statute but also the moral principles underlying the American form of government. Mr. Thomas maintains, with support from Abraham Lincoln and abolitionist Frederick Douglass, that the Constitution must be read in the context of the principle of equality inherent in the Declaration of Independence. In a powerful speech Mr. Thomas gave on Martin Luther King Day three years ago, he defended certain forms of civil disobedience. King often quoted Thomas Aquinas's statement, "An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law." Part of King's legacy, for Mr. Thomas, is his reflection on the close connection between law and morality. President Bush's nominee understands the hostility he is likely to face in Congress. "When you're up before those confirmation hearings, it's like going through Dante's Inferno. . . . I've seen a glimpse of that process. When you get up there, you just hope that you don't get destroyed so that even if you don't make it, you can go on with your life." Mr. Thomas is likely to be a very different kind of judge from the man he is replacing. When reminded of Thurgood Marshall's comment that he could not wholeheartedly celebrate the bicentennial of the American founding because the Constitution permitted slavery, Mr. Thomas shook his head. "I have felt the pain of racism as much as anyone else," Mr. Thomas says passionately. "Yet I am wild about the Constitution and about the Declaration. Abraham Lincoln once said that the American founders declared the right of equality whose enforcement would follow as soon as circumstances permitted. The more I learn about the ideals of those men, the more enthusiastic I get. . . . I believe in the American proposition, the American dream, because I've seen it in my own life." Mr. Thomas's life is a remarkable story. Born in a small frame house on the outskirts of Savannah, Ga., in 1948, Mr. Thomas endured all the hardships of the segregated South. His father left before he could walk, and his mother worked as a housemaid and picked crabs from the marsh to eat and sell. The family shared a single outhouse with several neighbors. In the summer of 1955, Clarence Thomas and his brother went to live with their maternal grandparents, who owned an ice delivery and fuel oil business. It is here, under the stern tutelage of his grandfather, Myers Anderson, that Mr. Thomas locates the beginning of his true education. "My grandfather has been the greatest single influence on my life," he claims. In 1987 he told the Atlantic, "When the civil rights people indict me, the man they are indicting is that man. Let them call him from the grave and indict him." As Mr. Thomas remembers, his grandfather believed that "Man ain't got no business on relief as long as he can work. Damn welfare, that relief]" At home the Thomas boys worked six hours a day in addition to school: raising the chickens, pigs and cows; cleaning the house and the yard; painting, roofing, plumbing and fixing; maintaining the oil trucks and making deliveries. These lessons of hard work, personal dignity and self-sufficiency were reinforced through years of Catholic school and college. He finished his undergraduate studies at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Mass. "That's where I started to get political and radical," Mr. Thomas recalls. "I read Malcolm X. I became interested in the Black Panthers." In 1971 he founded the Black Student Union at Holy Cross. He went on to Yale Law School, where he worked summers at New Haven Legal Assistance, continuing what he calls "my political consciousness raising." Nevertheless, "I never gave up my grandfather's ideals, and when my left-wing opinions began to clash with those ideals, I began to move away from the left." Eventually he took a job with Missouri Attorney General (now Senator) John Danforth because "he promised to treat me like anyone else. He promised to ignore the hell out of me."
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