Announcement by Mrs. Thomas Diminishes the Supreme Court

The best thing about my law school education was my clinical program where I was permitted to represent clients in court under the supervision of an experienced
lawyer. My first jury trial was a three-day criminal trial as a student lawyer before Judge Robert Shuker, a particularly stern trial judge who passed away in 1993. My clinical professors were terrific,
one went on the trial bench himself and the other founded the Southern Center
for Human Rights. It was understandable then that I jumped at a clinical professor’s job after
graduation. I almost forgot to consider that the job would be in Knoxville. I started this first job shortly before my wife and I were married and she moved with me, taking a job with the
local Legal Services office. We, in fact, met as clinic students, another benefit of a clinical legal education.

I remember one occasion while waiting for a hearing in Knoxville after we were married when another lawyer just had to blow off steam about a “woman attorney”
who had upset him. In truth, the woman had beaten him very badly in a contested hearing. The lawyer referred to the woman as a “real _____”(rhymes with witch). I
asked innocently who it was and it turned out that it was my wife-- who had never
taken my name after we were married.

Obviously, the lawyer did not know our connection.

The reason I mention any of this is because I heard on this morning’s news that Mrs. Clarence Thomas has decided to lead a reactionary political group despite the fact that her husband is one of the nine Supreme Court justices. Mrs. Thomas, which is how she refers to
herself, announced that she did not give up her First Amendment rights when her
husband joined the Supreme Court. Technically this is true, a spouse does not forfeit his or her right to pursue a career because of a judicial appointment, but I think the argument
advanced by Mrs. Thomas is both self-indulgent in its disregard for the integrity of
the Court and disingenuous.

The Court and its reputation for fairness and political impartiality are more important than any one justice and certainly more important than the politics of any one justice’s spouse. Allowing a family member to trade on her connection to a justice brings dishonor to the court on which the justice sits. This concern for the reputation of the Court is particularly acute now, after its recent, overtly political acts; missteps to my mind.


The announcement by Mrs. Thomas and her group comes quickly on the heels of the Court’s political decision in the Citizens United case where a five-member majority of the Court abandoned the common law’s preference for judicial restraint and reached out to strike campaign finance laws on grounds that the parties in the matter had voluntarily dismissed early in the case. This was followed by Justice Alito’s inability to hold his tongue when the President criticized the decision during his State of the Union Address. It was surprising to watch a Supreme Court justice mouth a rebuttal to the President during the speech. Gracious equanimity in the face of praise or criticism is the first rule of trial practice. Justice Alito’s faux pas was quickly compounded by the Chief Justice who mused during an Alabama law school speech that he might break with tradition and remove the Court’s members from attendance at the State of the Union addresses. And now, Mrs. Thomas speaks.


We know from Mrs. Thomas that she supports Tea Baggers and that her organization’s raison d’etre is to follow their lead. She also announced her pleasure at listening to Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. One wonders who is in the car with Mrs. Thomas as she enjoys these particularly abrasive political operatives.

I believe the separation from Justice Thomas disingenuous. Mrs. Thomas does not separate herself from her husband’s role as a Supreme Court justice. Rather, she seeks to gain advantage from it. The founding of yet another strident political group would have been a complete non-story…except for the fact that Mrs. Thomas is married to Clarence. She, and her group, trade on her relationship to a Supreme Court justice, at least for initial notoriety. This is true whether or not anything nefarious ever occurs. The media attention garnered by this new group would never have happened but for Mrs. Thomas’s status as a judicial spouse. So, though Mrs. Thomas protests that she should not be limited by her husband’s judicial appointment, that is not the point. The point is that she should clearly also not be permitted to advance her own political cause at the cost of the Supreme Court’s reputation.

By the way, my wife’s last name is…well, we’ll just keep that to ourselves.