Is he doing his job or just coasting along?
Well, he’s not doing his job, that’s for sure according to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin points out that today marks the completion of eight years during which Justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t opened his mouth during the hearing of a case. No questions, no nothing.
…There is more to the job of Supreme Court Justice than writing opinions. The Court’s arguments are not televised (though they should be), but they are public. They are, in fact, the public’s only windows onto the Justices’ thought processes, and they offer the litigants and their lawyers their only chance to look these arbiters in the eye and make their case. There’s a reason the phrase “your day in court” resonates. It is an indispensable part of the legal system. But the process works only if the Justices engage. …Toobin,NewYorker
And they do. But not Clarence Thomas. He sits there. This isn’t just weird or lazy. It’s a real insult.
By refusing to acknowledge the advocates or his fellow-Justices, Thomas treats them all with disrespect. It would be one thing if Thomas’s petulance reflected badly only on himself, which it did for the first few years of his ludicrous behavior. But at this point, eight years on, Thomas is demeaning the Court. Imagine, for a moment, if all nine Justices behaved as Thomas does on the bench. The public would rightly, and immediately, lose all faith in the Supreme Court. Instead, the public has lost, and should lose, any confidence it might have in Clarence Thomas. ...Toobin,NewYorker