To the Honorable Clarence Thomas, affiliate justice of the Supreme Court docket of the USA:
Expensive Sir:
Have you ever ever met your spouse?
Sure, it’s an impudent query, however it appears justified by the speech you gave Friday at a judicial convention in Atlanta and a question-and-answer session that adopted. In an apparent reference to the bombshell leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, you bemoaned that establishments are being “bullied” and stated the judiciary is threatened if individuals are unwilling to “stay with outcomes we don’t agree with.”
You stated this even though your bride of 35 years, conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, made headlines earlier this yr when it was revealed she schemed with the Trump White Home to maintain him in energy regardless of his election defeat. She echoed his baseless claims of fraud and even joined the Jan. 6 mob that rallied to overturn the election, although she claims she broke off from them earlier than they stormed the U.S. Capitol.
Mrs. Thomas, then, it would pretty be stated, is a poster little one for many who would bully establishments or refuse to stay with outcomes they dislike. So that you can elevate these issues with a straight face and no point out of her identify means that both the 2 of you haven't been correctly launched or that you're a man of staggering hypocrisy and deep mental dishonesty. One would hate to seek out these qualities in a person overseeing visitors court docket, a lot much less in a single sitting on the Supreme Court docket.
Right here’s the factor, sir: There are guidelines. The adherence to them, the flexibility to belief them, is what permits a society to operate. Among the guidelines are written, others aren't, however the truth that they aren’t makes them no much less vital. One such unwritten rule is that the collegial confidentiality of the excessive court docket is sacrosanct. So sure, it’s unlucky some leaker leaked.
However she or he is hardly the primary individual to violate the court docket’s unwritten norms. One among your colleagues occupies a seat stolen for him from President Obama. One other occupies a seat she was crammed into eight days earlier than the 2020 election by the identical Republicans who had stated that 9 months out was too near Election Day 2016 to think about Obama’s nominee. Some transparently lied once they testified in affirmation hearings that they revered Roe as settled legislation. And actually, sir, isn’t it a bit unseemly for the spouse of a Supreme Court docket justice to be a part of a conspiracy to overturn an election? Or for him to fail to recuse himself from any instances arising therefrom?
As People, we've historically revered Supreme Court docket rulings even once they had been godawful, even once they set the nation again, as a result of nonetheless dumb or dreadful they had been, we thought-about the court docket itself an apolitical and duly constituted tribunal. In a phrase, it was professional. However of their naked knuckles, end-justifies-the-means method to the court docket, conservatives have devastated that little bit of civic religion.
Small marvel a September Gallup ballot discovered approval of the court docket at 40%, the bottom Gallup has ever recorded, and down sharply from 58% the yr earlier than. One cringes to suppose the place it stands proper now. And one wonders: If the Court docket loses its legitimacy, can its authority be far behind?
Within the face of that query, your problem is that an nameless leaker violated confidentiality? Sir, perhaps that individual simply wonders why she or he ought to be required to respect the foundations.
It doesn’t appear to be anybody else is.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a Miami Herald columnist. ©2022 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content material Company.