I've always admired Justice Clarence Thomas. Disagree with his judicial or constitutional philosophy, but if you think he's a fool or a poor thinker, you haven't bothered to actually read the things he's written. And since his views are the most like mine on the court when it comes to originalism and living-constitutionalism, I'm glad to see what might be the start of his rehabilitation in the public mind. Jeffrey Tobin in the New Yorker does a profile of Thomas that really should have heads exploding in Washington:
Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.
In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.
[. . .]
At most liberals have long seen Thomas as the Sancho Panza to Justice Antonio Scalia's Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger. No, says Toobin: the intellectual influence runs the other way. Thomas is the consistently clear and purposeful theorist that history will remember as an intellectual pioneer; Scalia the less clear-minded colleague who is gradually following in Thomas' tracks.
If Toobin's revionist take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work.
I think that's right about Thomas and Scalia. They're the two strongest originalists on the court, but Scalia has a tendency to let his political beliefs affect how strongly he defers to precedent and original intent. Thomas is much more the purist, and his body of work as a whole offers a consistent and compelling argument for limited government.
