Justice Clarence Thomas has served for 32 years on the U.S. Supreme Court where he has been a consistent originalist who has led the Court to move in his direction on issues as varied as the Confrontation Clause; federalism; executive power; and the reining in of the administrative state. He has written hundreds, if not thousands, of opinions, and one thing is apparent from all of them that I have read. They all reflect Justice Thomas's authorial voice, and they do not reflect the authorial voice of his law clerks. Justice Thomas's brilliance, and commitment to originalism shine through in all of his opinions. He is more consistent, steady, and reliable than any other justice on the Supreme Court. He almost never follows precedent, but he always follows the original public meaning of the text of the Constitution. He is the very best justice out of 116 to have ever served on the U.S. Supreme Court better even than my old boss Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Thomas not only talks about the importance of being an originalist; he practices originalism in every majority opinion, concurrence, or dissent that he writes. I do not always agree with Justice Thomas, but I always know where he stands and why.
I say this because neither legal academia nor the news industry seem to be aware that the very best justice, which the Supreme Court has ever had is currently serving on the bench. Left wing bias, and a disinclination to read Justice Thomas's opinions, has so skewed our public perception of him that no-one realizes what former Second Circuit Chief Judge Ralph Winter once told me is true: "Clarence Thomas is quite simply a genius." Moreover, Justice Thomas has such a clear body of rules, which he consistently follows in case after case over 32 years on the bench that it is as obvious as the day is long that he is incorruptible in every sense of that word. Justice Thomas would never "bend" the law to please Justice Scalia, his closest friend; his wife Ginni Thomas, who is active as she has every right to be in politics, or his good and close friend; the Koch brothers; Texas billionaire Harlan Crow; or anyone else. Clarence Thomas cannot be "bought." He is completely and utterly incorruptible as anyone who takes the time to read the opinions, which he produces prolifically can plainly see. I defy the many critics of Justice Thomas's ethics to point to a single outcome in which he wrote any opinion whatsoever or took any action whatsoever for a corrupt purpose.
The attacks in the news media on Justice Thomas are sickening and unfair. To begin with, Justice Thomas's salary is $285,400 per year. If Congress had adjusted for inflation the salary that Supreme Court justices made in 1969 at the end of the Warren Court, Justice Thomas would be being paid $500,000 a year, and he would not need to rely as much as he has on gifts from wealthy friends. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post wrote on December 19th of this year that "But — and here is a sentence I am not accustomed to writing — Thomas has a point. Supreme Court justices, and their colleagues on the lower federal courts, ought to be paid more." Clarence Thomas blundered. But the justices are underpaid.
