Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court silences are less worrisome than his private speeches.
February 15, 2011- Justice Clarence Thomas is getting a lot of attention lately for what he isn't saying and where he isn't saying it. According to Adam Liptak in the New York Times, the last time Thomas asked a question in court was exactly five years ago next Tuesday. If there were cameras permitted at the Supreme Court, I'd wager, this news would be news to precisely no one. I'd also wager that if there were cameras at the court, Thomas would be inclined to speak more frequently.
Liptak reviews the reasons Thomas has offered for his refusal to say anything as cases are argued before the court. Sometimes Thomas says that because he grew up speaking Geechee—a dialect spoken by former slaves in Georgia—his mastery of English was always a source of anxiety to him. Sometimes Thomas says that with so many justices jabbering at once, oral argument has become a circus, and he refuses to contribute to an atmosphere he has likened to Family Feud. Thomas also says that you can't be judging if you are also debating and once wondered aloud about what would happen if a bunch of surgeons loudly debated gallbladder surgery while standing around the operating room. "You really didn't go in there to have a debate about gallbladder surgery," he said at the time. "We are there to decide cases, not to engage in seminar discussions."
Perhaps somewhat predictably, response to Thomas' five years of silence splits fairly evenly along ideological lines. Liptak quotes a critic writing in a law review article in 2009: "If Justice Thomas holds a strong view of the law in a case, he should offer it," the article says. "Litigants could then counter it, or try to do so. It is not enough that Justice Thomas merely attend oral argument if he does not participate in argument meaningfully." Liptak also explains what any regular court-watcher has long noticed: It's not just that Thomas is silent at oral argument. He takes pains to look "irritated or bored." He makes it clear that he'd rather be anyplace but in that chamber. There is a difference between being silent in public and being annoyed.
Damon Root, writing yesterday at Reason Online, points out that Thomas' silence does not reflect a lack of intellectual influence at the court. So what if he doesn't talk? His decades' worth of opinions speak for themselves. Earl Ofari Hutchinson makes the same point, albeit less admiringly, writing: "Thomas is not the legal boob that his arch critics lambaste him as. That's their stock explanation for why he remains stone silent on the bench. Thomas has an unabashed and glaringly transparent agenda; a legal and political agenda that has been unshakable since his narrow, controversial and much reviled confirmation in 1991." Hutchinson adds: "This doesn't require any prolonged give and take on his part with the legion of attorneys that parade before him during oral arguments. His opinions could be mailed in they are so reflexive and predictable."
Much of the thinking about the significance of Thomas' silence at arguments turns on one's subjective beliefs about the purpose of oral argument: If you believe it shapes judicial opinions, or telegraphs important areas of concern to counsel, or allows the justices a forum in which to bridge the differences among themselves, then Thomas' decision not to participate feels like an insult. If you believe it's the sole opportunity for the court to interact formally before the American public, it can seem like a deliberate snub.