Don't Underestimate Clarence Thomas

Critics of the enigmatic Supreme Court Justice have overlooked his influence for too long.

- By Damon Root

When President George H.W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, he described the justice-to-be as "a fiercely independent thinker with an excellent legal mind." Many of Thomas' leading critics, then and now, would not even grant him that much.

For decades, liberal commentators dismissed Thomas as an intellectual lightweight who took his marching orders from the late Justice Antonin Scalia-his "apparent mentor," as New York Times legal correspondent Linda Greenhouse sneered in a 1992 article. More recently, some have argued that the rightwing activism of his wife, Ginni Thomas, should disqualify Thomas from the bench. In 2016, to mark the 25th anniversary of Thomas' appointment to the Court, New Yorker legal pundit Jeffrey Toobin derided the justice as a failed crank who would leave no "footprints" on the law. "After years at the periphery of the Court," Toobin wrote, "Thomas looks destined to serve out his term at the even more distant fringe."

Greenhouse and Toobin had no idea what they were talking about. It was actually Thomas who influenced Scalia's opinions in several areas of the law, as Scalia himself repeatedly acknowledged. And if you want to see tracks, look no further than the Supreme Court's recently concluded 2021-22 term, which has Thomas' footprints all over it. In one big case after another, from the expansion of gun rights to the elimination of the constitutional right to abortion, Thomas' long-held views either commanded or inspired the majority of the Court. His critics underestimated him at their peril.

And that is just part of the story about Thomas' impact on American law.