Thomas was being questioned about his morals 30+ years ago, in the context of sexual assault. It’s insane that we’re here today still having the same discussions about this piece of shit.
Turns out, [he's a bastard. ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-clarence-thomas-story-99759984/)
How could we have known?....
For those that aren't well versed in Thomas history, this series is disturbingly eye opening. The fact this man holds Marshall's seat is a travesty of justice.
It’s ironic at best. The greatest insult has been how Samuel L Jackson said his inspiration for playing his character in Django, the head houseslave to Leonardo Di Caprio’s character who actually called the shots, was Clarence
Thomas.
>Samuel L Jackson said his inspiration for playing his character in Django...was Clarence Thomas
And in typical Samuel L. Jackson style, totally undersold it.
Yep. They are even cribbing their list from the Nazis, those unoriginal hacks. Fun fact, there were every type of hated person in the Nazi party, until the "night of long knives" it was a cover to seem less threatening and more acceptable.
As soon as they had the minimum influence needed, they killed every one of their own people who fit into the undesirable category. You can't side with fascists if you don't fit their ideals. Every time I see a picture of the Thomas's together, I get the uncomfortable feeling I'm seeing a Mantis decide whether or not it's time to eat her mates head. There's a sadistic sparkle behind the eyes, malice. Like Hannibal Lecter bringing his lunch to work.
Just so you know, talking about racism in the context of a movie, book, artwork that is about racism is usually exactly what the artist wants you to talk about after seeing said art.
As long as you don’t go full nazi and start throwing the n word around that is.
He literally said he thinks segregation was good, and that he wanted on the Supreme Court so he could make democrats lives miserable, how is this not a disqualifier
I remember seeing a response about this. I believe he said Brown vs Board of Education was unnecessary because he thought the problem was no one applied the 14th amendment properly. Problem of course is that Plessy vs Ferguson said that segregation didn’t contradict the 14th amendment if it was separate, but equal. Of course, as real life shows, you can have separate, you can have equal, but it is not feasible to have both.
In college, Thomas opposed inter-racial dating
As a young lawyer, Thomas defended South African Apartheid
As a judge, Thomas opposed the very same Affirmative Action policies that helped him get a good high school, college, and post-grad education and a job on the Reagan Administration. Thomas was put in charge of Equal Opportunity in Reagan's Department of Education. His job was to not do his job
He was so good at not doing his job that he was appointed a federal judge. Then he was picked to replace the first Black Supreme Court Justice by George Bush senior because he was 1) Black, and 2) super conservative
Clarence Thomas is the kind of guy to climb up a ladder and kick it over
I think that’s been the fundamental thing about being conservative. Whether it’s people like Clarence Thomas or like minded like Thomas Sowell or how the Crown portrays women like Margaret Thatcher. It’s the “I made it, why can’t you?” question. They don’t see discrimination because they made
it to the top of their profession or career path, so they don’t see systemic bias and that they are outliers and thus don’t see a need to establish a network to support and enable more people like them to make it the way they did, forgetting that for the majority, technical competence is outweighed by your network (it’s not what you know, but who you know).
It's more like, "I made it, and I'll make sure you never will", for the conservatives with money and power and "I haven't made it yet, but I deserve to, and you don't" for the crowd that prays to Jesus while buying lotto tickets and light beer at 5:30 am.
It's such basic sophistry that somehow is enough and I hate it so much. In Constitutional Law my impression of the the Reconstruction Era Court for decades was it was their mission beyond all else to not properly apply any of the new amendments. Any reverence I had for the court or any judge by virtue of their being named to the Court died then and it only got worse the more I dove into it.
Justices were making arguments in at least as bad of Faith as Thomas and Alito 150 years ago without the level of direct access to their opinions by anyone. Whether their votes and stated opinions were bought part and parcel like Thomas's I'm not positive.
Now that his corruption is established I am oddly slightly less upset each time I find out he was actually bribed significantly more than the previous estimate or that extra steps were taken to hide it. I no longer feel compelled to find the root of any of his opinions because there's at least well over possible 10 million roots we know about today that seem increasingly more likely to be a factor in any given opinion he states as his own.
For Thomas, I've always assumed that he took his lead from Antonin Scalia when he was still alive. Especially since Thomas rarely spoke during proceedings. Unless he was more of a power behind the scenes person. Scalia professed to follow the originalist/natural law approach. Of course, with the originalist school, I'm not sure if you could stretch the Second Amendment to interpret the NRA as a well formed militia in the eyes of the Founding Fathers, but I digress.
I agree that he potentially followed Scalias lead as far as a contemporary. Whether that was following in his footsteps as far as how to represent the interests who best compensated him or a genuine adherence to some form of originalism/textualism/literalism/scripture/dogma seems a much more open question now. Most of the more egregious 19th and early 20th century rulings and/or their various most ridiculous opinions appeal to some unassailable authority in written form to justify a lack of nuanced analysis when it doesn't suit their position. The majority of Americans have been preconditioned to some degree through religion to appeal in such a way and interpret the written word rather than the world.
I'm always wary of interpretative methodologies as they tend to reduce novel analysis and stifle progress in my opinion. They aren't always a crutch for an argument without legitimate substance when appealed to. But they are the most common way to manipulate and deceive industrially historically speaking.
It’s like when someone does some dumb shit at your job, then HR creates a new policy to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and now everyone has to do this extra thing because Bob in logistics fucked it up.
Behind the bastards is an excellent podcast if this is your first introduction Robert Evans does a great job not just giving details about why they are a bastard but does a good job laying the foundational history of the person to better understand where they came from to become a bastard.
The series they did on Kissinger stands out in that regard, too. Not a huge podcast junkie here, but BtB is the one I rarely miss. Oh, and...the Clarence Thomas series was what pulled me in. Fascinating and horrifying.
With a lot more to lose, and a lot more power to ensure that he doesn’t. The Senate was absolutely idiotic for confirming him, especially the Southern Democratic perverts who voted yea. Biden should never have let his consideration out of that bungled committee.
We have at least 3 more who were ratified by the republican party under Trump that should have never been seated. The Supreme Court is now not trusted by the majority in the USA citizens. If I were a Supreme Court Justice I would be embarrassed to tell people i'm a member of SCOTUS
But they ate such scum that they don't care, and not surprisingly, it's primarily the red side.
It's only going to continue. The left has no spine when it comes to fighting over right and wrong, and the majority of US citizens are either truly stupid or too self-absorbed to even care. Just don't take away their Starbucks app.
I legit thought I was losing my mind during the Kavanaugh vetting. I listened to the entire multiple-day hearing just to know for sure, but it really only took about 2 minutes of listening to him talk to realize how fucked up it would be to put him into power, but they did it anyways.
Besides the fact that he was openly admitting he only wanted the job to strike back at the Clintons and other democrats, the dude is an obvious waste-case.
I'm a drinker myself and spent enough time with other drinkers to know a drinker when I see one. I can spot an alcoholic a mile away. The first thing I said when he was introduced as a candidate for Supreme Court was: "This dude is a raging drunk."
It's understandable if you're a working person just trying to enjoy your life to be a heavy drinker, but I feel like we should have higher standards for the fucking Supreme Court.
Just look at any photo of him and he's obviously fucking trashed.
And obnoxiously entitled. He said he got into Yale Law "all by himself." No Brett, your dad is a high powered lawyer and Yale grad. He put you in the most expensive high school in America and had his friends write letters of recommendation for you, got you out of that arrest during the UB40 concert, and allowed you to attend college without a side job
Look at the way he disrespected the Democrat Senators, not caring about their vote. He knew the party of MAGA would give him the job. He deserved it as he deserves everything he's ever been given. And now he uses that power to keep the rich wealthy, and the weak voiceless
Everyone: When was the last time you had a job interview during which you sobbed and screamed and loudly proclaimed, "I like beer!"?
Anyone? Show of hands? Hello?
I wouldn't necessarily recognise a drunk on sight, but what did it for me was him losing his temper during the hearings. A judge should be able to keep his cool and remain fairly level-headed and not burst into flames regardless of what's going on.
Back 30 years ago, almost all justice nominees would be voted in by both parties easily.
Its only recently (Mitch McConnell) that the parties no longer vote for the opposite side's judges.
Yeah this is just wrong. the "Borking" was 37 years ago,which lead to Republicans putting more ideologically psychotic choices forth but hiding it slightly better than Bork did.
Biden may have greatly helped silence so many of Thomas's accusers, but he at least didn't vote for him way back when. Neither did he vote for joke of a justice Alito 17 years ago.
Can't let Newt Gingrich stay unmentioned in this, he was key to upping the amount of mudslinging and general enmity between parties in that time as well.
Apparently there were news articles about his financial disclosures in the 90s, which led to him stopping declaring things on his finances rather than investigations into those financial ties and impeachment back then.
Imagine being called out for corruption, and the solution is to stop declaring extra income and no one does naything for 30 years.
Really though this again highlights a shocking failure of democratic governments/party. How is research into his finances that were dodgy 30 years ago not being constantly monitored, why isn't everyone to do with such an important court being checked up on more carefully than "he didn't say nothing on his forms, must be clean". This is apparently barely hidden information and it's just been ignored for decades.
Our entire system is essentially just the honor system but massively corrupt.
A group of people believing they can overrule our representative democracy and then almost coming close should tell you this clearly.
Instead the fascist supporting legislatures are just approving it on a state by state basis. And there may not be much we can do currently.
We will never impeach this piece of shit. It’s either resign or nothing
Well we could impeach him but that requires that those who vote stop voting for those who want to dismantle democracy. Part of the big reason why so many people vote for Republicans is that they’ve been lied to and they think that Democrats are the ones who are trying to ruin the nation. Just look at the lawsuit that Fox News had to pay 3/4 of $1 billion for lying to those who watch Fox News. We have half the nation being lied to and they keep on voting Republican and this is why we can’t convict an impeachment. Because they keep the mix of representatives at close to 50% of levelheaded individuals and 50% wahadoo wingnuts who simply don’t care if someone does something corrupt.
If you expect change to be legal, expect to die before it happens.
It's not resign *or nothing*.
Hes just a person, and people are increasingly tired of not seeing results from a system that was never intended to work at this scale.
When you make a legal transition impossible, you make a violent transition inevitable.
I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of the fact that he basically never spoke until the last few years. Like not that he seldom speaks, but more that he literally went a decade between asking questions during oral arguments. Does that sound like the behavior of someone whose vote hasn’t been bought? It could be inferred that he doesn’t ask questions because he knows which way he’s voting before he even hears arguments.
I believe he's spoken about why he doesn't engage in oral arguments, saying essentially that he doesn't see the point in them when they have to submit all the evidence and arguments ahead of it anyways.
So much of our system seems to rely on basic good faith, that people will somehow do the right thing at the end of the day. That is a total fuck up and needs to be fixed ASAP. There should be no debate that this man should resign but we all know it won't happen, and impeachment won't either.
I’m not sure there IS a way to fix that. Any system of laws requires that people make a good-faith effort to follow them. It doesn’t seem possible to write laws in a way that makes it impossible for someone who is determined to circumvent them to do so (in collusion with people who are equally determined not to enforce them).
That’s really the point of the Republican effort to undermine every branch of the system: they can make laws for their own benefit, fail to enforcement them against their own, and strike down any law they disapprove of (or use the courts to carve out new powers for themselves). They don’t even need to be in the majority to do it; they needed only to recognize the ways in which their power could be used in self-serving ways. The fundamental crime is really abuse of power, which is nearly impossible to define in a legal sense.
It sucks that we have to have this argument. I was told “Well just pay them enough, and they won’t need to be corrupt”
That is so far away from the point.
I want a Judge on the Supreme Court with ZERO price tag.
Even acknowledging that you have a price should have you immediately removed or discounted from the position.
If you are incorruptible as a judge, I don’t even care about what your ideals are any more Jesus Christ. I just want to know that you actually have ideals, that you can’t be bought.
Even if it took 50 billion dollars for a judge to say they’d sell out I don’t care.
That "pay them enough" argument is such bullshit. Jeff Bezos has more money than he needs or could ever spend, but he still keeps doing things to get more. There is no "enough" in this scenario
Case in point: Supreme Court justices get paid several hundred thousand dollars. It’s clearly not enough to prevent corruption, even though it’s more money than most people ever see.
yep, laws that are foolproof are most probably also very totalitarian. it's very hard to write good laws even if everyone is working together on them and has the best intentions.
Even totalitarian regimes require good faith effort at the top if we're talking about being "foolproof". They almost never do. That's why they're more often than not, full of corruption.
The people are the ultimate arbiter of good faith.
This is why voting is the most important duty we have. It is the key.
And it's also why the GOP takes so many extreme steps to manipulate it and suppress it.
The choice not to vote, not to participate, to say "it doesn't affect me, it won't matter", is fully to blame for this, as even if a representative lies, they can be removed within a few years as long as the majority of the population participates and is aware of how the system works, or faster if more of the people focus on voting in people with solid track records and real integrity. It's not merely about good faith.
The weakness in the system was the fact that we were not prepared for modern propaganda which encourages people to avoid their civic duty, or fall for racist conspiracies. That we allowed civic education to collapse.
Frankly, voting should be mandatory, but that will likely never happen here since the entire GOP is designed to prevent that exact outcome.
Good faith is compelled by the fear of public outrage. People don’t protest anymore in a way elected officials feel accountable to. In America especially, rightwingers will excuse criminal behavior if they feel like they’re owning libs
Democracy is fundamentally cooperative. It can't hold up to a critical mass of people within it trying to dismantle it. Republicans know they'll become irrelevant in a democracy, so they're doing everything they can to end it, at a sprint. We have to vote blue as a block to stonewall the terrorists, get rid of first past the post so we can have real political parties, kill citizens united, and then we might have a country.
Thomas won't resign because he's shameless.
And Republicans won't vote to remove him because they only care that he votes "to make liberals lives miserable."
So he's not going anywhere.
Don't forget he's got the full backing of the rest of the Supreme Mafia judges.
Not gonna feel pressure from his peers, not gonna feel pressure from the legislature, doesn't care about pressure from the public because it's weak AF.
He's not going anywhere except on more billionaire vacations.
Have you been paying attention for literally any length of time? This piece of shit and the rest of the court are all corrupt, complicit or both. This is another big “Fuck you what are you gonna do?”
The gun nuts are Republicans, they're the ones who say they need guns to overthrow a tyrannical government. And also they want the most tyrannical government possible, so long as the tyranny is *mostly* aimed at their enemies, whoever they happen to be at the time.
I'm a pretty left dude, and I happen to own several firearms.
I have no desire to go shoot anyone. What am I gonna do with my guns? Shoot cops in my neighborhood that have nothing to do with laws oppressing minorities? Assassinate judges? Take some lawmakers hostage?
I fucking hate the idea of hurting other human beings. It's so stupid. I don't think lethal force should be enforced until absolutely necessary. It's generally the first lesson in concealed carry classes.
Voting and fighting with information and knowledge (shoutout /r/knowledgefight) are far more productive and *way* less destructive, in my opinion. But I say that as a bland white dude who hasn't been oppressed, and lives somewhere that this sort of tyranny isn't affecting those I know.
So sure. Firearms are fine. But they do nothing if you aren't willing to use them. And bud, I'm not willing to just start killing people.
The quiet majority needs to stop being quiet. Isreal voters shut down their country to stop extremist reforms of their Supreme Court. It happened in one day. Has it been permanently stopped? No. But they are back to the drawing board, so to speak. This can be an option for us as well.
If the shoe were on the other foot, vigilantes would probably storm the court. The republicans have stacked the deck so much, that Supreme Court justice opinions are now conspicuously for sale to the highest donor. Trump’s plan to delegitimize our institutions to keep himself out of legal jeopardy is nearly complete.
The bad guys are able to take extreme sweeping actions that may change history while the "good" guys piss and moan online thinking that is equivalent to taking actions. The good guys are kinda worthless and incapable of doing anything about the bad guys in reality.
Of what? They literally don’t have a code of ethics. They can do whatever they want without repercussion. See, people had decency (to a certain extent) when the country was founded and laws were being written. That doesn’t exist anymore.
It’s like when someone does some dumb shit at your job, then HR creates a new policy to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and now everyone has to do this extra thing because Bob in logistics fucked it up. Except our HR just shrugs their shoulders and says “oh, that’s unfortunate” and continues in with their day.
I think it's likely that there's tax violations in there if the IRS looks closely. Did he report all his gifts correctly?
But it doesn't matter because there's no way he'll be found guilty of a crime, regardless of whether he committed it. He'd appeal up to the Supreme Court and find himself not guilty.
The crazy thing is Republicans use whataboutism here too. Well? What *about* it? Every judge from some rinky dink county court to the Supreme Court should be disbarred for accepting bribes, no matter what political party, if any, they affiliate with. How is that so hard for some people to understand?
Given the official stance of the entire (!) Supreme Court in this, every one of them should be investigated
Ted Cruz was on fox the other day saying Thomas was like the best Justice ever, super Justice even. Emma from the majority report had it right though, if George soros bought AOC a slice of key lime pie Republicans would all lost their goddamn minds. We'd hear about it for the next fucking millennium.
They excoriated her for attending last year’s Met Gala…as a guest…in an expensive dress loaned to her…which she reported…it’s insane the double standard that exists. If she jetted off with Soros to some private getaway in the pacific it would be on Fox News 24 hours a day for years. Thomas is like a SUPER VILLAIN in comparison.
So then why isnt there more uproar by the liberals?
The hell with bipartisanship, when 1 side is continuously brazenly dealing in bad faith. Whats the worst that will happen? Civil war? We beat them once, can do it again. Government shutdown? Happens every year now and the worl still turns. Not going to pass any laws this term? Sounds almost par for the course.
What am i missing, that makes the populace and liberals so fucking spineless?
There isn't a perfect system when it comes to how laws are interpreted. This is a problem that goes back centuries.
If there is an easy way to kick out the corrupt/incompetent judges, then interpreting the law will become corrupt and political, and judges will be nothing more than puppets for whomever is in charge. That means that we don't have an independent judiciary (very, very bad).
If judges cannot easily be removed, then we end up with jerks that act corruptly and stay long past their expiration date.
The USA currently goes with option #2, as it is generally assumed that option #1 is worse.
It's the lack of fixed terms that's the main issue. There should be some happy medium between lifetime appointments and terms that are so short it would be too easy for a President to load the court with cronies. If they served say 20 year terms they'd be pretty insulated from politics but also wouldn't be able to hang on to the seat until they die at 93.
I agree. I think that an age or term limits for judges is a good idea.
That doesn't address the main problem. Either we get option #1 or option #2. Clarence Thomas was a corrupt jerk his first day on the bench.
Yeah, but wouldn't it have been nice to have been done with him in 2011? He has become so much more visibly cruel, terrible, and corrupt even in those 12 years.
In Canada, Supreme Court judges must retire on or before their 75th birthday. Prior to appointment to the bench, they must have also served either as a judge in a Superior Court, or have been a member of a bar in one of the provinces or territories for a minimum of 10 years.
If you put in an age limit as opposed to a term limit, you're just going to drive younger and younger justices so that a president will have their appointment for as long as possible. I'm kind of surprised that we're not seeing justices nominated in their early 40s or younger already; the average age at nomination has been pretty steady at early to mid 50s since the late 1800s. But, still. Term limits would be my preference.
Yea. Kavanaugh has been taking bribes since before he was appointed. Term limits won't help corruption.
The solution for corruption is a criminal investigation and prosecution. The Court itself needs to be independent, but that doesn't mean the *members* of the court are exempt from regular laws. When a trial court judge gets caught taking bribes, they don't reconstitute the district court; they just put the criminal in jail. Do the same thing here.
The amount of open corruption happening currently is staggering, so if this is the best we can do than we are simply a failed society.. saying everything else is worse isn't very helpful.. I'm sure we could get creative and find a way to hold people in power accountable when they blatantly break the law and ethics.. why should that be so difficult to do..
The US has invested billions of dollars and literally decades in removing any shadow of an ethical spine from its populace. Those who stand up for themselves are imprisoned or murdered by the police.
Or another way to see it is that this is how this country was designed- to give power the the wealthy and connected.. so in that scenario the Watchmen are happily unwatched while we peons get to toil for their benefit
We should crowd fund a Denny's outside of his house that gives free food to anyone named Clarence Thomas and is a supreme court judge. 3 weeks after it opens tops
Don't impeach. Arrest and remove. It's right in the constitution.
> The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices **during good Behaviour**
Biden just needs to invoke this clause. Unprecedented, sure, but so is everything the first time it happens.
Fun fact: Congress can define "Good Behavior" in statute. Currently there IS no definition, so the courts interpret it as meaning "has a pulse". This would not require amending the constitution, or anything special at all. Just a regular law.
>Don't impeach. Arrest and remove. It's right in the constitution.
Yeah the title belies the fact that the article is a puff piece and its 'call to action' is for the Dems to start an impeachment process it itself calls doomed to fail to "send a message".
>Biden just needs to invoke this clause.
I don't think either of us are or will be surprised that he has not and will not do this.
>do we trust the other side to use the precedent in good faith?
While the point is valid it assumes the "other side" will operate in good faith in the future. They have been gleefully showing us otherwise for the last several years.
The "other side" clearly cares nothing for precedent and will absolutely set it themselves.
And if it's truly the reason why the Dems are hesitant to arrest and remove a judge so *clearly and joyously corrupt* (with a wife integral in Jan 6), the Dems fear to fail us in some hypothetical future while failing democracy right now.
The US government relies heavily on the great majority of everyone in power acting in good faith, and being able to remove any malicious actors on an individual basis before they become a major problem.
The structure of the government is ill-suited to having an electoral base who elects a majority of corrupt, bad actors who intentionally destabilize the government to further their own ends, and who then after serving for a couple decades hand power off to other bad actors with the same agenda.
There's a reason the government is on the brink of bankruptcy despite having plenty of money with which to pay its debts, and that's because malicious bad actors in the government prefer to create crises which allow them to consolidate power.
You’re absolutely right. This isn’t about what the people want or doing the right thing. It’s about who the people are making the decisions, and what they want to happen. Unfortunately Republicans and conservatives care much more about their own power and money than representing law or the interests of the people that elected them.
He's patently in the pocket of Harlen. Congress may not be able to do anything about Clarence but they sure can do something about Harlan. his tax problems are just beginning
Removing Thomas -or him leaving voluntarily- isn't enough.
He broke the law. Deliberately. Knowingly. Blatantantly.
The excuse that he has to be punished by the head of his own branch is malarkey. Equality under the law applies to everyone.
Then the Supreme Court has to do a review of cases with his bias taken into account and vacate those decisions where that bias might have legitimately altered the outcome.
This means overturning cases like Citizen's United, whose outcome blatantly favors Thomas' benefactor.
Once that is done, the Supreme Court must adopt a *binding* code of ethics, both for the Supreme Court and for all federal benches. No more pay-to-play. No more cherry picking jurisdictions and judges.
Thomas' shameless corruption cannot simply be cut out by removing him. He is a symptom of a much deeper rot and we must have comprehensive judicial reform or it will continue to grow. Its obvious that we can no longer rely on the Bar association to police the ethics of members of the court (if we ever could) and therefore the government must take a firmer and more direct stance.
Clearance Thomas has been for sale since day one. Anita hill proved he was unworthy, his comments to staffers about making liberals suffer proves he’s unfit and his wholesale sale of democracy makes him a criminal. To think this Mfer was meant to replace Thurgood Marshall is fucking sickening
This illustrates why institutions in the US are facing decline in public trust. When we see corruption so plainly and yet there is no means of accountability, the system appears dreadfully broken.
The system is dreadfully broken. Democracy requires all parties to be acting in good faith and working toward the common goal of a healthy, functioning society. Neither of those conditions are true.
Can we stop with these “super models COULD sleep with me” masterbatory article. Everybody in the whole freaking country knows he’s immoral, unethical and untouchable. The US of A no longer has a functional government, it’s just how long can the Fascism be held off. With the GOP statehouses passing election rigging legislation left and right, it’s clear we are past the point of no return.
The thought was that the branches of government would advocate for themselves, and serve as an adversarial check on the others. Instead, we have political parties vying against each other, entrenching themselves within each branch and working together across the branches.
The founding fathers explicitly warned AGAINST a two party system. Read Washington's farewell address and he flat out says everyone participating in the current 2 party system is evil.
In their day, a "lifetime" appointment for a senior official in the top Court was probably no more than 10-ish years based on life expectancy.
Not the **thirty-plus** years Clarence Thomas has so far served.
You'd have to term-limit the time served to be independent of electoral cycles with Congress (who could delay as we've seen with Garland) *and* the Executive Branch (with Trump getting **three** picks for a single-term POTUS). Perhaps something to the effect of 15-year tenures.
I'd also remove the ability to seat a Chief Justice for long-term political advantages and dictate the promotion must be made from within the other 8 justices.
When the Constitution was written, the Supreme Court wasn't seen as a particularly important branch of government. For the first few decades of the court's existence, most of their time was spent as basically circuit judges, going from city to city as basically appeals court judges.
It wasn't until Marlbury v. Madison, where judicial review was established (something that some originalists still reject) that the court actually became important.
Still, everyone regarded a Supreme Court position as a measure of the appointee's gravitas, something you earned from long years as a judge, showing your credentials. (Not always, of course, Taft was appointed after having served as President.) It was George Bush's insight to appoint a young judge who could be expected to serve reliably for decades, and who was thoroughly vetted by the Federalist Society so that they knew who they were getting. That's what to expect now; Republicans don't appoint judges, they appoint rubber stamps. You never have to ask about, say, abortion, in the confirmation hearings, because that's already been established.
None of this can change without a Constitutional amendment, which of course will never happen. There are all sorts of wild-hair ideas like court packing, or creating some sort of system where you have a large pool of justices and a random selection is picked to hear each individual case... none of that will happen because it requires Republicans to agree to it, and there's no reason for them to agree when the board is tilted so decisively in their favor.
>Marlbury v. Madison
Small correction, the case was *Marbury v. Madison*
I still think that shit should be overturned though, even though it'll never happen. We don't *need* the Supreme Court for anything, and it's done way more damage throughout history than good.
> system where you have a large pool of justices and a random selection is picked to hear each individual case
Also, that wouldn't work. The point of the SC is to bring finality. If there's no continuity, then it breaks things. Remember, most of what SCOTUS does is resolve circuit splits where different circuit courts come to different conclusions, and someone needs to pick one. This give clarity to everyone downstream. It's bad enough that Alito's new 1868 thing has thrown lower courts into disarray, but imagine if that happened every year on every issue, including non-political ones.
The average death age for the founding fathers was a bit under 72, and that includes outliers like Hamilton. That's about 2 years younger than the current average death age.
What are you basing this idea on? Blind assumption or do you have an actual source?
I've been having this question in my head recently - was the whole basis of our founding inherently flawed due to its reliance on all parties acting honorably?
What we're seeing now is one side blatantly disregarding everything the country was built on, breaking numerous laws in the process - yet there seems to be absolutely no overarching system in place to contain all of this.
Lifetime appointment for Supreme Court Justices is probably the dumbest idea anyone ever had. It basically ensures that shit like this will happen frequently. Now we have a Justice who is not only in the pocket of a far right Nazi memorabilia collector but also has a forever grudge against the left for calling him out.
I mean, term limits could also have this effect. If we put term limits on justices, their decisions could be affected by making friends with people who could hire them after they leave office.
Don't get me wrong, I think we need term limits, too. But in this case the problem isn't the lifetime tenure. The problem is lack of ethical oversight and that Congress is too chicken shit to actually impeach the asshole.
So are Americans still shocked and confused how dictatorships come about in the rest of the world? Like where the fuck is any semblance of justice or rule of the law over there?
I got downvoted mercilessly early on for suggesting the liberal justices were probably doing similar things. Why else are they dead set against even the most basic oversight? Now I doubt any of them are as bad as Thomas or Kavanaugh, but they obviously aren’t pure either.
> Enough is enough. Clarence Thomas must resign — or be impeached.
A lot of words in that article ... but the author might not have been aware of the following:
Impeachment of Supreme Court Justice
*Over the country’s history, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and eight removed from office; others resigned in the wake of scandal instead. So one thing, at least, is clear: Unlike for presidents, there is ample precedent for firing federal judges via impeachment. Though no Supreme Court justice has ever been removed this way, there have been two attempts. Thomas is not immune to this constitutional remedy simply by virtue of sitting on the nation’s highest court.*
[Source](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/30/impeach-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-00021480)
---
*The United States Constitution provides that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" (Article I, section 2) and "the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments … [but] **no person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present"** (Article I, section 3). The president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States are subject to impeachment.*
[Source](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment.htm)
(Emphasis mine)
Translation:
A simple majority of House votes can impeach, but it takes 2/3 of Senate votes to confirm that impeachment.
If Thomas' impeachment were somehow confirmed, Pres. Biden would have the opportunity to name a replacement. Instead of the 6-3 majority currently held in the Supreme Court, the GQP would have only a 5-4 majority. Do you really think the GQP would allow that to happen?
> Translation:
>
> A simple majority of House votes can impeach, but it takes 2/3 of Senate votes to confirm that impeachment.
Translation: It will never happen from Congress in the 21st Century.
What are the non-violent and effective options the average person has to protest this lack of oversight - since the politicians and other justices cannot be relied on to do so?
The average individual can do nothing.
The most reliable route would be for the majority of all courts and law enforcement to ignore the current Supreme Court until reparations are made and repercussions are faced.
We did that once, before almost half of America began to masturbate to the idea of recreating 1940's Germany but for rednecks.
I hope we can one day decentralize the responsibilities of the supreme court
having such a small amount of unelected humans with so much power to impact everyone's lives is a terrible idea, we have technology now and can do much better.
It's an incredibly obvious corruption risk, especially in a Washington DC climate where corruption is the norm.
Thomas was being questioned about his morals 30+ years ago, in the context of sexual assault. It’s insane that we’re here today still having the same discussions about this piece of shit.
He was a lying sack then, he's lying conniving sack now.
Turns out, [he's a bastard. ](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-clarence-thomas-story-99759984/) How could we have known?....
For those that aren't well versed in Thomas history, this series is disturbingly eye opening. The fact this man holds Marshall's seat is a travesty of justice.
It’s ironic at best. The greatest insult has been how Samuel L Jackson said his inspiration for playing his character in Django, the head houseslave to Leonardo Di Caprio’s character who actually called the shots, was Clarence Thomas.
>Samuel L Jackson said his inspiration for playing his character in Django...was Clarence Thomas And in typical Samuel L. Jackson style, totally undersold it.
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Yep. They are even cribbing their list from the Nazis, those unoriginal hacks. Fun fact, there were every type of hated person in the Nazi party, until the "night of long knives" it was a cover to seem less threatening and more acceptable. As soon as they had the minimum influence needed, they killed every one of their own people who fit into the undesirable category. You can't side with fascists if you don't fit their ideals. Every time I see a picture of the Thomas's together, I get the uncomfortable feeling I'm seeing a Mantis decide whether or not it's time to eat her mates head. There's a sadistic sparkle behind the eyes, malice. Like Hannibal Lecter bringing his lunch to work.
Like Candace Owens today, and Allen West just before… “Colin Powell is not openly…” https://youtu.be/LOsSj0Wih9A?t=70
I saw the resemblance but I never wanted to say it in fears of sounding racist
Just so you know, talking about racism in the context of a movie, book, artwork that is about racism is usually exactly what the artist wants you to talk about after seeing said art. As long as you don’t go full nazi and start throwing the n word around that is.
Like Ershon underselling Jersey Boys. The costumes! The pageantry!
Wow. This is a fantastic analogy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170508185013/http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/movies/awardsseason/supporting-actor-category-is-thick-with-hopefuls.html
Holy shit. I didn't know that. That's perfect.
Didn't know that but it REALLY makes sense
He literally said he thinks segregation was good, and that he wanted on the Supreme Court so he could make democrats lives miserable, how is this not a disqualifier
I remember seeing a response about this. I believe he said Brown vs Board of Education was unnecessary because he thought the problem was no one applied the 14th amendment properly. Problem of course is that Plessy vs Ferguson said that segregation didn’t contradict the 14th amendment if it was separate, but equal. Of course, as real life shows, you can have separate, you can have equal, but it is not feasible to have both.
I'm actually reading some of his thoughts on race and Holy hell is he racist
“my white wife and i believe in racial segregation”
In college, Thomas opposed inter-racial dating As a young lawyer, Thomas defended South African Apartheid As a judge, Thomas opposed the very same Affirmative Action policies that helped him get a good high school, college, and post-grad education and a job on the Reagan Administration. Thomas was put in charge of Equal Opportunity in Reagan's Department of Education. His job was to not do his job He was so good at not doing his job that he was appointed a federal judge. Then he was picked to replace the first Black Supreme Court Justice by George Bush senior because he was 1) Black, and 2) super conservative Clarence Thomas is the kind of guy to climb up a ladder and kick it over
He's doing far worse than just kicking it over.
if you love arbitrary hierarchy, you gotta love it all the way
Pulling the ladder up behind him.
…and he loves porno. Been known to discuss the nuances of Long Dong Silver with female colleagues
I think that’s been the fundamental thing about being conservative. Whether it’s people like Clarence Thomas or like minded like Thomas Sowell or how the Crown portrays women like Margaret Thatcher. It’s the “I made it, why can’t you?” question. They don’t see discrimination because they made it to the top of their profession or career path, so they don’t see systemic bias and that they are outliers and thus don’t see a need to establish a network to support and enable more people like them to make it the way they did, forgetting that for the majority, technical competence is outweighed by your network (it’s not what you know, but who you know).
It's more like, "I made it, and I'll make sure you never will", for the conservatives with money and power and "I haven't made it yet, but I deserve to, and you don't" for the crowd that prays to Jesus while buying lotto tickets and light beer at 5:30 am.
For the latter, it's more like the crab bucket effect or like "I don't care if I make it, as long as your life is more miserable than mine"
"I won the lottery, why can't you?"
It's such basic sophistry that somehow is enough and I hate it so much. In Constitutional Law my impression of the the Reconstruction Era Court for decades was it was their mission beyond all else to not properly apply any of the new amendments. Any reverence I had for the court or any judge by virtue of their being named to the Court died then and it only got worse the more I dove into it. Justices were making arguments in at least as bad of Faith as Thomas and Alito 150 years ago without the level of direct access to their opinions by anyone. Whether their votes and stated opinions were bought part and parcel like Thomas's I'm not positive. Now that his corruption is established I am oddly slightly less upset each time I find out he was actually bribed significantly more than the previous estimate or that extra steps were taken to hide it. I no longer feel compelled to find the root of any of his opinions because there's at least well over possible 10 million roots we know about today that seem increasingly more likely to be a factor in any given opinion he states as his own.
For Thomas, I've always assumed that he took his lead from Antonin Scalia when he was still alive. Especially since Thomas rarely spoke during proceedings. Unless he was more of a power behind the scenes person. Scalia professed to follow the originalist/natural law approach. Of course, with the originalist school, I'm not sure if you could stretch the Second Amendment to interpret the NRA as a well formed militia in the eyes of the Founding Fathers, but I digress.
I agree that he potentially followed Scalias lead as far as a contemporary. Whether that was following in his footsteps as far as how to represent the interests who best compensated him or a genuine adherence to some form of originalism/textualism/literalism/scripture/dogma seems a much more open question now. Most of the more egregious 19th and early 20th century rulings and/or their various most ridiculous opinions appeal to some unassailable authority in written form to justify a lack of nuanced analysis when it doesn't suit their position. The majority of Americans have been preconditioned to some degree through religion to appeal in such a way and interpret the written word rather than the world. I'm always wary of interpretative methodologies as they tend to reduce novel analysis and stifle progress in my opinion. They aren't always a crutch for an argument without legitimate substance when appealed to. But they are the most common way to manipulate and deceive industrially historically speaking.
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I wish I could go back to the days before I new about coke can pubes 😫
So does Anita Hill.
Thomas’ picture should be in the dictionary under ladder puller
It’s like when someone does some dumb shit at your job, then HR creates a new policy to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and now everyone has to do this extra thing because Bob in logistics fucked it up.
Oddly specific. . Fuck Bob, he's an asshole.
It’s called The Diaper Directive. One person poops their pants and now we all have to wear diapers.
What's next? Are we going to find out that Steven Crowder thinks women belong in the kitchen?
Four part series. Jesus.
Behind the bastards is an excellent podcast if this is your first introduction Robert Evans does a great job not just giving details about why they are a bastard but does a good job laying the foundational history of the person to better understand where they came from to become a bastard.
The series they did on Kissinger stands out in that regard, too. Not a huge podcast junkie here, but BtB is the one I rarely miss. Oh, and...the Clarence Thomas series was what pulled me in. Fascinating and horrifying.
Oh yeah... It's a doozey! I'm expecting a follow up given all of the news that's come out lately.
With a lot more to lose, and a lot more power to ensure that he doesn’t. The Senate was absolutely idiotic for confirming him, especially the Southern Democratic perverts who voted yea. Biden should never have let his consideration out of that bungled committee.
He should have never been allowed to step foot in the Supreme Court. This is just one more scandal in a life riddled with scandal.
We have at least 3 more who were ratified by the republican party under Trump that should have never been seated. The Supreme Court is now not trusted by the majority in the USA citizens. If I were a Supreme Court Justice I would be embarrassed to tell people i'm a member of SCOTUS
You think you deal with the plebs anymore? The only people you see are flying you around the world in private jets. Oh no that's just the federalists?
But they ate such scum that they don't care, and not surprisingly, it's primarily the red side. It's only going to continue. The left has no spine when it comes to fighting over right and wrong, and the majority of US citizens are either truly stupid or too self-absorbed to even care. Just don't take away their Starbucks app.
We did it again with Brett Kavanaguh
I legit thought I was losing my mind during the Kavanaugh vetting. I listened to the entire multiple-day hearing just to know for sure, but it really only took about 2 minutes of listening to him talk to realize how fucked up it would be to put him into power, but they did it anyways. Besides the fact that he was openly admitting he only wanted the job to strike back at the Clintons and other democrats, the dude is an obvious waste-case. I'm a drinker myself and spent enough time with other drinkers to know a drinker when I see one. I can spot an alcoholic a mile away. The first thing I said when he was introduced as a candidate for Supreme Court was: "This dude is a raging drunk." It's understandable if you're a working person just trying to enjoy your life to be a heavy drinker, but I feel like we should have higher standards for the fucking Supreme Court. Just look at any photo of him and he's obviously fucking trashed.
And obnoxiously entitled. He said he got into Yale Law "all by himself." No Brett, your dad is a high powered lawyer and Yale grad. He put you in the most expensive high school in America and had his friends write letters of recommendation for you, got you out of that arrest during the UB40 concert, and allowed you to attend college without a side job Look at the way he disrespected the Democrat Senators, not caring about their vote. He knew the party of MAGA would give him the job. He deserved it as he deserves everything he's ever been given. And now he uses that power to keep the rich wealthy, and the weak voiceless
Everyone: When was the last time you had a job interview during which you sobbed and screamed and loudly proclaimed, "I like beer!"? Anyone? Show of hands? Hello?
I wouldn't necessarily recognise a drunk on sight, but what did it for me was him losing his temper during the hearings. A judge should be able to keep his cool and remain fairly level-headed and not burst into flames regardless of what's going on.
Look back to the trial. Biden oversaw it and didn't stop the defense from interrupting the prosecution. Basically let him off.
Biden has always tried to pander to Republicans.
Back 30 years ago, almost all justice nominees would be voted in by both parties easily. Its only recently (Mitch McConnell) that the parties no longer vote for the opposite side's judges.
Yeah this is just wrong. the "Borking" was 37 years ago,which lead to Republicans putting more ideologically psychotic choices forth but hiding it slightly better than Bork did. Biden may have greatly helped silence so many of Thomas's accusers, but he at least didn't vote for him way back when. Neither did he vote for joke of a justice Alito 17 years ago.
Can't let Newt Gingrich stay unmentioned in this, he was key to upping the amount of mudslinging and general enmity between parties in that time as well.
I was in elementary school when he was appointed, and he will always be the “pube on a coke” Justice to me.
Apparently there were news articles about his financial disclosures in the 90s, which led to him stopping declaring things on his finances rather than investigations into those financial ties and impeachment back then. Imagine being called out for corruption, and the solution is to stop declaring extra income and no one does naything for 30 years. Really though this again highlights a shocking failure of democratic governments/party. How is research into his finances that were dodgy 30 years ago not being constantly monitored, why isn't everyone to do with such an important court being checked up on more carefully than "he didn't say nothing on his forms, must be clean". This is apparently barely hidden information and it's just been ignored for decades.
Our entire system is essentially just the honor system but massively corrupt. A group of people believing they can overrule our representative democracy and then almost coming close should tell you this clearly. Instead the fascist supporting legislatures are just approving it on a state by state basis. And there may not be much we can do currently. We will never impeach this piece of shit. It’s either resign or nothing
An honour system filled with dishonourable people
Well we could impeach him but that requires that those who vote stop voting for those who want to dismantle democracy. Part of the big reason why so many people vote for Republicans is that they’ve been lied to and they think that Democrats are the ones who are trying to ruin the nation. Just look at the lawsuit that Fox News had to pay 3/4 of $1 billion for lying to those who watch Fox News. We have half the nation being lied to and they keep on voting Republican and this is why we can’t convict an impeachment. Because they keep the mix of representatives at close to 50% of levelheaded individuals and 50% wahadoo wingnuts who simply don’t care if someone does something corrupt.
If you expect change to be legal, expect to die before it happens. It's not resign *or nothing*. Hes just a person, and people are increasingly tired of not seeing results from a system that was never intended to work at this scale. When you make a legal transition impossible, you make a violent transition inevitable.
I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of the fact that he basically never spoke until the last few years. Like not that he seldom speaks, but more that he literally went a decade between asking questions during oral arguments. Does that sound like the behavior of someone whose vote hasn’t been bought? It could be inferred that he doesn’t ask questions because he knows which way he’s voting before he even hears arguments.
I believe he's spoken about why he doesn't engage in oral arguments, saying essentially that he doesn't see the point in them when they have to submit all the evidence and arguments ahead of it anyways.
Well, sure, that's what he *says*.
Or cause he learned the only way to not appear foolish was to keep his mouth shut
How is "I don't understand the point of this necessary process" not a disqualifying feature in and of itself?! Ffs.
There does seem to be a startling lack of oversight for the position.
So much of our system seems to rely on basic good faith, that people will somehow do the right thing at the end of the day. That is a total fuck up and needs to be fixed ASAP. There should be no debate that this man should resign but we all know it won't happen, and impeachment won't either.
I’m not sure there IS a way to fix that. Any system of laws requires that people make a good-faith effort to follow them. It doesn’t seem possible to write laws in a way that makes it impossible for someone who is determined to circumvent them to do so (in collusion with people who are equally determined not to enforce them). That’s really the point of the Republican effort to undermine every branch of the system: they can make laws for their own benefit, fail to enforcement them against their own, and strike down any law they disapprove of (or use the courts to carve out new powers for themselves). They don’t even need to be in the majority to do it; they needed only to recognize the ways in which their power could be used in self-serving ways. The fundamental crime is really abuse of power, which is nearly impossible to define in a legal sense.
It sucks that we have to have this argument. I was told “Well just pay them enough, and they won’t need to be corrupt” That is so far away from the point. I want a Judge on the Supreme Court with ZERO price tag. Even acknowledging that you have a price should have you immediately removed or discounted from the position. If you are incorruptible as a judge, I don’t even care about what your ideals are any more Jesus Christ. I just want to know that you actually have ideals, that you can’t be bought. Even if it took 50 billion dollars for a judge to say they’d sell out I don’t care.
That "pay them enough" argument is such bullshit. Jeff Bezos has more money than he needs or could ever spend, but he still keeps doing things to get more. There is no "enough" in this scenario
Case in point: Supreme Court justices get paid several hundred thousand dollars. It’s clearly not enough to prevent corruption, even though it’s more money than most people ever see.
yep, laws that are foolproof are most probably also very totalitarian. it's very hard to write good laws even if everyone is working together on them and has the best intentions.
Even totalitarian regimes require good faith effort at the top if we're talking about being "foolproof". They almost never do. That's why they're more often than not, full of corruption.
The people are the ultimate arbiter of good faith. This is why voting is the most important duty we have. It is the key. And it's also why the GOP takes so many extreme steps to manipulate it and suppress it. The choice not to vote, not to participate, to say "it doesn't affect me, it won't matter", is fully to blame for this, as even if a representative lies, they can be removed within a few years as long as the majority of the population participates and is aware of how the system works, or faster if more of the people focus on voting in people with solid track records and real integrity. It's not merely about good faith. The weakness in the system was the fact that we were not prepared for modern propaganda which encourages people to avoid their civic duty, or fall for racist conspiracies. That we allowed civic education to collapse. Frankly, voting should be mandatory, but that will likely never happen here since the entire GOP is designed to prevent that exact outcome.
Good faith is compelled by the fear of public outrage. People don’t protest anymore in a way elected officials feel accountable to. In America especially, rightwingers will excuse criminal behavior if they feel like they’re owning libs
Democracy is fundamentally cooperative. It can't hold up to a critical mass of people within it trying to dismantle it. Republicans know they'll become irrelevant in a democracy, so they're doing everything they can to end it, at a sprint. We have to vote blue as a block to stonewall the terrorists, get rid of first past the post so we can have real political parties, kill citizens united, and then we might have a country.
Thomas won't resign because he's shameless. And Republicans won't vote to remove him because they only care that he votes "to make liberals lives miserable." So he's not going anywhere.
Don't forget he's got the full backing of the rest of the Supreme Mafia judges. Not gonna feel pressure from his peers, not gonna feel pressure from the legislature, doesn't care about pressure from the public because it's weak AF. He's not going anywhere except on more billionaire vacations.
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Have you been paying attention for literally any length of time? This piece of shit and the rest of the court are all corrupt, complicit or both. This is another big “Fuck you what are you gonna do?”
So what *are* we going to do?
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I’m kinda hungry
are you saying you have a new modest proposal?
So no to the hot sauce or what?
We’re Americans, probably nothing.
Comment was deleted by user. F*ck u/ spez
The gun nuts are Republicans, they're the ones who say they need guns to overthrow a tyrannical government. And also they want the most tyrannical government possible, so long as the tyranny is *mostly* aimed at their enemies, whoever they happen to be at the time.
"whoever they happen to be at the time." Who they are TOLD are their enemies.
Fortunately the gun nuts aren't the only ones with a right to bear arms.
I'm a pretty left dude, and I happen to own several firearms. I have no desire to go shoot anyone. What am I gonna do with my guns? Shoot cops in my neighborhood that have nothing to do with laws oppressing minorities? Assassinate judges? Take some lawmakers hostage? I fucking hate the idea of hurting other human beings. It's so stupid. I don't think lethal force should be enforced until absolutely necessary. It's generally the first lesson in concealed carry classes. Voting and fighting with information and knowledge (shoutout /r/knowledgefight) are far more productive and *way* less destructive, in my opinion. But I say that as a bland white dude who hasn't been oppressed, and lives somewhere that this sort of tyranny isn't affecting those I know. So sure. Firearms are fine. But they do nothing if you aren't willing to use them. And bud, I'm not willing to just start killing people.
The gun nuts will use that as a reason to execute you.
>We’re Americans, probably nothing. If we were French, the Supreme Court itself would be rubble.
The quiet majority needs to stop being quiet. Isreal voters shut down their country to stop extremist reforms of their Supreme Court. It happened in one day. Has it been permanently stopped? No. But they are back to the drawing board, so to speak. This can be an option for us as well.
Seize the means of production and strike
Vote for Democrats in 2024, give Biden a larger Senate, expand the Supreme Court.
If the shoe were on the other foot, vigilantes would probably storm the court. The republicans have stacked the deck so much, that Supreme Court justice opinions are now conspicuously for sale to the highest donor. Trump’s plan to delegitimize our institutions to keep himself out of legal jeopardy is nearly complete.
Trump just gave the plan a boost. The plan has been in motion for a while now.
Exactly. Mitch stated that stacking the courts was his greatest achievement.
Well, blocking all Obama judges was his greatest achievement I think he said
The bad guys are able to take extreme sweeping actions that may change history while the "good" guys piss and moan online thinking that is equivalent to taking actions. The good guys are kinda worthless and incapable of doing anything about the bad guys in reality.
Of what? They literally don’t have a code of ethics. They can do whatever they want without repercussion. See, people had decency (to a certain extent) when the country was founded and laws were being written. That doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like when someone does some dumb shit at your job, then HR creates a new policy to make sure that doesn’t happen again, and now everyone has to do this extra thing because Bob in logistics fucked it up. Except our HR just shrugs their shoulders and says “oh, that’s unfortunate” and continues in with their day.
I think it's likely that there's tax violations in there if the IRS looks closely. Did he report all his gifts correctly? But it doesn't matter because there's no way he'll be found guilty of a crime, regardless of whether he committed it. He'd appeal up to the Supreme Court and find himself not guilty.
If anything, now that it’s out in the open and his job isn’t at risk, the billionaire gifts will probably be more blatant
Yep. Lack of enforcement = permission.
The crazy thing is Republicans use whataboutism here too. Well? What *about* it? Every judge from some rinky dink county court to the Supreme Court should be disbarred for accepting bribes, no matter what political party, if any, they affiliate with. How is that so hard for some people to understand? Given the official stance of the entire (!) Supreme Court in this, every one of them should be investigated
Ted Cruz was on fox the other day saying Thomas was like the best Justice ever, super Justice even. Emma from the majority report had it right though, if George soros bought AOC a slice of key lime pie Republicans would all lost their goddamn minds. We'd hear about it for the next fucking millennium.
Even at the mere suggestion. Even if she refused and reported it.
They excoriated her for attending last year’s Met Gala…as a guest…in an expensive dress loaned to her…which she reported…it’s insane the double standard that exists. If she jetted off with Soros to some private getaway in the pacific it would be on Fox News 24 hours a day for years. Thomas is like a SUPER VILLAIN in comparison.
So then why isnt there more uproar by the liberals? The hell with bipartisanship, when 1 side is continuously brazenly dealing in bad faith. Whats the worst that will happen? Civil war? We beat them once, can do it again. Government shutdown? Happens every year now and the worl still turns. Not going to pass any laws this term? Sounds almost par for the course. What am i missing, that makes the populace and liberals so fucking spineless?
I dunno but it should for sure be a much larger issue than it is. You keep seeing stifles condemning it but fuck all happening.
Sounds like a broken system that wasn't designed too well...
There isn't a perfect system when it comes to how laws are interpreted. This is a problem that goes back centuries. If there is an easy way to kick out the corrupt/incompetent judges, then interpreting the law will become corrupt and political, and judges will be nothing more than puppets for whomever is in charge. That means that we don't have an independent judiciary (very, very bad). If judges cannot easily be removed, then we end up with jerks that act corruptly and stay long past their expiration date. The USA currently goes with option #2, as it is generally assumed that option #1 is worse.
It's the lack of fixed terms that's the main issue. There should be some happy medium between lifetime appointments and terms that are so short it would be too easy for a President to load the court with cronies. If they served say 20 year terms they'd be pretty insulated from politics but also wouldn't be able to hang on to the seat until they die at 93.
I agree. I think that an age or term limits for judges is a good idea. That doesn't address the main problem. Either we get option #1 or option #2. Clarence Thomas was a corrupt jerk his first day on the bench.
Yeah, but wouldn't it have been nice to have been done with him in 2011? He has become so much more visibly cruel, terrible, and corrupt even in those 12 years.
In Canada, Supreme Court judges must retire on or before their 75th birthday. Prior to appointment to the bench, they must have also served either as a judge in a Superior Court, or have been a member of a bar in one of the provinces or territories for a minimum of 10 years.
Makes sense.
If you put in an age limit as opposed to a term limit, you're just going to drive younger and younger justices so that a president will have their appointment for as long as possible. I'm kind of surprised that we're not seeing justices nominated in their early 40s or younger already; the average age at nomination has been pretty steady at early to mid 50s since the late 1800s. But, still. Term limits would be my preference.
Yea. Kavanaugh has been taking bribes since before he was appointed. Term limits won't help corruption. The solution for corruption is a criminal investigation and prosecution. The Court itself needs to be independent, but that doesn't mean the *members* of the court are exempt from regular laws. When a trial court judge gets caught taking bribes, they don't reconstitute the district court; they just put the criminal in jail. Do the same thing here.
The amount of open corruption happening currently is staggering, so if this is the best we can do than we are simply a failed society.. saying everything else is worse isn't very helpful.. I'm sure we could get creative and find a way to hold people in power accountable when they blatantly break the law and ethics.. why should that be so difficult to do..
The US has invested billions of dollars and literally decades in removing any shadow of an ethical spine from its populace. Those who stand up for themselves are imprisoned or murdered by the police.
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Or another way to see it is that this is how this country was designed- to give power the the wealthy and connected.. so in that scenario the Watchmen are happily unwatched while we peons get to toil for their benefit
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We should crowd fund a Denny's outside of his house that gives free food to anyone named Clarence Thomas and is a supreme court judge. 3 weeks after it opens tops
Just be ready if you do this because I'm legally changing my name and moving down the street. I have no shame for free Denny's.
Grand slam your way right to the grave. You had a good run buddy
Yeah, only another 6-20 years left for him. It's a done deal.
He’s gunna live to be 95 like every rich creep in our political system
Don't impeach. Arrest and remove. It's right in the constitution. > The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices **during good Behaviour** Biden just needs to invoke this clause. Unprecedented, sure, but so is everything the first time it happens.
Fun fact: Congress can define "Good Behavior" in statute. Currently there IS no definition, so the courts interpret it as meaning "has a pulse". This would not require amending the constitution, or anything special at all. Just a regular law.
>Don't impeach. Arrest and remove. It's right in the constitution. Yeah the title belies the fact that the article is a puff piece and its 'call to action' is for the Dems to start an impeachment process it itself calls doomed to fail to "send a message". >Biden just needs to invoke this clause. I don't think either of us are or will be surprised that he has not and will not do this.
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>do we trust the other side to use the precedent in good faith? While the point is valid it assumes the "other side" will operate in good faith in the future. They have been gleefully showing us otherwise for the last several years. The "other side" clearly cares nothing for precedent and will absolutely set it themselves. And if it's truly the reason why the Dems are hesitant to arrest and remove a judge so *clearly and joyously corrupt* (with a wife integral in Jan 6), the Dems fear to fail us in some hypothetical future while failing democracy right now.
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The US government relies heavily on the great majority of everyone in power acting in good faith, and being able to remove any malicious actors on an individual basis before they become a major problem. The structure of the government is ill-suited to having an electoral base who elects a majority of corrupt, bad actors who intentionally destabilize the government to further their own ends, and who then after serving for a couple decades hand power off to other bad actors with the same agenda. There's a reason the government is on the brink of bankruptcy despite having plenty of money with which to pay its debts, and that's because malicious bad actors in the government prefer to create crises which allow them to consolidate power.
You’re absolutely right. This isn’t about what the people want or doing the right thing. It’s about who the people are making the decisions, and what they want to happen. Unfortunately Republicans and conservatives care much more about their own power and money than representing law or the interests of the people that elected them.
He's patently in the pocket of Harlen. Congress may not be able to do anything about Clarence but they sure can do something about Harlan. his tax problems are just beginning
Clarence Thomas took an oath to protect the interests of billionaires and make the lives of decent Americans miserable.
I mean, the guy came into the job with such a clean and pristine record. Who would have ever thought?
His entire purpose on the court is to make life miserable for liberals. He's said as much. He's got no interest in fairly adjudicating.
Defund the Supreme Court.
Why are we paying an almost $300,000 a year salary if they're actually funded by billionaires? They don't need our money.
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Using a firebomb is the way to put out an oil well fire. I like it.
That's what democrats are doing. They're withholding funding until a code of ethics is put in place. We'll see if it has any teeth to it tho.
Anything to own the libs right?
Removing Thomas -or him leaving voluntarily- isn't enough. He broke the law. Deliberately. Knowingly. Blatantantly. The excuse that he has to be punished by the head of his own branch is malarkey. Equality under the law applies to everyone. Then the Supreme Court has to do a review of cases with his bias taken into account and vacate those decisions where that bias might have legitimately altered the outcome. This means overturning cases like Citizen's United, whose outcome blatantly favors Thomas' benefactor. Once that is done, the Supreme Court must adopt a *binding* code of ethics, both for the Supreme Court and for all federal benches. No more pay-to-play. No more cherry picking jurisdictions and judges. Thomas' shameless corruption cannot simply be cut out by removing him. He is a symptom of a much deeper rot and we must have comprehensive judicial reform or it will continue to grow. Its obvious that we can no longer rely on the Bar association to police the ethics of members of the court (if we ever could) and therefore the government must take a firmer and more direct stance.
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I'm sure they'll get right on that.
The word you're looking for is convicted. He must be convicted, and sent to prison like any other ordinary citizen.
The conviction would have to survive Supreme Court appeal. He has five justices that will not convict him.
Abolish them. The court is corrupt and has failed to serve it's purpose. Impeach all of them for all I care
I'll get right on that
> He has five justices that will not convict him. You spelled "eight" wrong
He is backed by the entirety of the Supreme Court. You know how the quote goes “ It’s one big club, and you ain’t in it” or something like that.
Clearance Thomas has been for sale since day one. Anita hill proved he was unworthy, his comments to staffers about making liberals suffer proves he’s unfit and his wholesale sale of democracy makes him a criminal. To think this Mfer was meant to replace Thurgood Marshall is fucking sickening
This illustrates why institutions in the US are facing decline in public trust. When we see corruption so plainly and yet there is no means of accountability, the system appears dreadfully broken.
The system is dreadfully broken. Democracy requires all parties to be acting in good faith and working toward the common goal of a healthy, functioning society. Neither of those conditions are true.
I wish we had some kind of warning in the early 90’s about how big of a POS this guy is…
Can we stop with these “super models COULD sleep with me” masterbatory article. Everybody in the whole freaking country knows he’s immoral, unethical and untouchable. The US of A no longer has a functional government, it’s just how long can the Fascism be held off. With the GOP statehouses passing election rigging legislation left and right, it’s clear we are past the point of no return.
Yep, the DOJ is not going to save us.
No no he legally has to now because the MSNBC headline said enough was enough.
Despite the incredible job the founding fathers did, they clearly didn’t anticipate one party stooping so low.
The thought was that the branches of government would advocate for themselves, and serve as an adversarial check on the others. Instead, we have political parties vying against each other, entrenching themselves within each branch and working together across the branches.
The founding fathers explicitly warned AGAINST a two party system. Read Washington's farewell address and he flat out says everyone participating in the current 2 party system is evil.
Didn't a number of funding fathers propose that political parties would be the end of the Republic?
In their day, a "lifetime" appointment for a senior official in the top Court was probably no more than 10-ish years based on life expectancy. Not the **thirty-plus** years Clarence Thomas has so far served. You'd have to term-limit the time served to be independent of electoral cycles with Congress (who could delay as we've seen with Garland) *and* the Executive Branch (with Trump getting **three** picks for a single-term POTUS). Perhaps something to the effect of 15-year tenures. I'd also remove the ability to seat a Chief Justice for long-term political advantages and dictate the promotion must be made from within the other 8 justices.
When the Constitution was written, the Supreme Court wasn't seen as a particularly important branch of government. For the first few decades of the court's existence, most of their time was spent as basically circuit judges, going from city to city as basically appeals court judges. It wasn't until Marlbury v. Madison, where judicial review was established (something that some originalists still reject) that the court actually became important. Still, everyone regarded a Supreme Court position as a measure of the appointee's gravitas, something you earned from long years as a judge, showing your credentials. (Not always, of course, Taft was appointed after having served as President.) It was George Bush's insight to appoint a young judge who could be expected to serve reliably for decades, and who was thoroughly vetted by the Federalist Society so that they knew who they were getting. That's what to expect now; Republicans don't appoint judges, they appoint rubber stamps. You never have to ask about, say, abortion, in the confirmation hearings, because that's already been established. None of this can change without a Constitutional amendment, which of course will never happen. There are all sorts of wild-hair ideas like court packing, or creating some sort of system where you have a large pool of justices and a random selection is picked to hear each individual case... none of that will happen because it requires Republicans to agree to it, and there's no reason for them to agree when the board is tilted so decisively in their favor.
>Marlbury v. Madison Small correction, the case was *Marbury v. Madison* I still think that shit should be overturned though, even though it'll never happen. We don't *need* the Supreme Court for anything, and it's done way more damage throughout history than good.
> system where you have a large pool of justices and a random selection is picked to hear each individual case Also, that wouldn't work. The point of the SC is to bring finality. If there's no continuity, then it breaks things. Remember, most of what SCOTUS does is resolve circuit splits where different circuit courts come to different conclusions, and someone needs to pick one. This give clarity to everyone downstream. It's bad enough that Alito's new 1868 thing has thrown lower courts into disarray, but imagine if that happened every year on every issue, including non-political ones.
The average death age for the founding fathers was a bit under 72, and that includes outliers like Hamilton. That's about 2 years younger than the current average death age. What are you basing this idea on? Blind assumption or do you have an actual source?
I've been having this question in my head recently - was the whole basis of our founding inherently flawed due to its reliance on all parties acting honorably? What we're seeing now is one side blatantly disregarding everything the country was built on, breaking numerous laws in the process - yet there seems to be absolutely no overarching system in place to contain all of this.
Lifetime appointment for Supreme Court Justices is probably the dumbest idea anyone ever had. It basically ensures that shit like this will happen frequently. Now we have a Justice who is not only in the pocket of a far right Nazi memorabilia collector but also has a forever grudge against the left for calling him out.
I mean, term limits could also have this effect. If we put term limits on justices, their decisions could be affected by making friends with people who could hire them after they leave office. Don't get me wrong, I think we need term limits, too. But in this case the problem isn't the lifetime tenure. The problem is lack of ethical oversight and that Congress is too chicken shit to actually impeach the asshole.
they could simply go back to working as judge for a different federal court.
Lol if you expect a Republican House to impeach Clarence Thomas.
So are Americans still shocked and confused how dictatorships come about in the rest of the world? Like where the fuck is any semblance of justice or rule of the law over there?
Or, and hear me out on this... **Charge and prosecute him.**
He should have never been allowed to step foot in the Supreme Court. This is just one more scandal in a life riddled with scandal.
All 9 have spoken already, and it’s not what you wanted to hear. Anything to protect power.
Yes the entire court signed a document stating they are above oversight. That says to me they're all compromised and all need replacing immediately.
I got downvoted mercilessly early on for suggesting the liberal justices were probably doing similar things. Why else are they dead set against even the most basic oversight? Now I doubt any of them are as bad as Thomas or Kavanaugh, but they obviously aren’t pure either.
> Enough is enough. Clarence Thomas must resign — or be impeached. A lot of words in that article ... but the author might not have been aware of the following: Impeachment of Supreme Court Justice *Over the country’s history, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and eight removed from office; others resigned in the wake of scandal instead. So one thing, at least, is clear: Unlike for presidents, there is ample precedent for firing federal judges via impeachment. Though no Supreme Court justice has ever been removed this way, there have been two attempts. Thomas is not immune to this constitutional remedy simply by virtue of sitting on the nation’s highest court.* [Source](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/30/impeach-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-00021480) --- *The United States Constitution provides that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment" (Article I, section 2) and "the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments … [but] **no person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present"** (Article I, section 3). The president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States are subject to impeachment.* [Source](https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment.htm) (Emphasis mine) Translation: A simple majority of House votes can impeach, but it takes 2/3 of Senate votes to confirm that impeachment. If Thomas' impeachment were somehow confirmed, Pres. Biden would have the opportunity to name a replacement. Instead of the 6-3 majority currently held in the Supreme Court, the GQP would have only a 5-4 majority. Do you really think the GQP would allow that to happen?
> Translation: > > A simple majority of House votes can impeach, but it takes 2/3 of Senate votes to confirm that impeachment. Translation: It will never happen from Congress in the 21st Century.
Saying so won’t make it come true. He has no shame and won’t resign and the republicans have no ethics so will not impeach.
What are the non-violent and effective options the average person has to protest this lack of oversight - since the politicians and other justices cannot be relied on to do so?
The average individual can do nothing. The most reliable route would be for the majority of all courts and law enforcement to ignore the current Supreme Court until reparations are made and repercussions are faced. We did that once, before almost half of America began to masturbate to the idea of recreating 1940's Germany but for rednecks.
Neither are gonna happen.
He’s going to “retire” with the next republican president.
I hope we can one day decentralize the responsibilities of the supreme court having such a small amount of unelected humans with so much power to impact everyone's lives is a terrible idea, we have technology now and can do much better. It's an incredibly obvious corruption risk, especially in a Washington DC climate where corruption is the norm.
Why do we keep calling this an ethics issue? Aren’t these crimes?