While I was in South America in late February, I missed Jeffrey Tobin's moronic article about Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas which appeared in the New Yorker. According to Tobin, Thomas' conduct during arguments is disgraceful and forfeits all right Thomas may have had to the respect of the public and the legal profession.
What, you make ask, is Thomas' transgression? What is this travesty of conduct that makes Thomas a pariah in Tobin's view? The answer is simple: Thomas does not interrupt lawyers during arguments to ask them questions about what they are saying. Instead, Thomas sits silently and listens to the lawyers and the questions from his colleagues.
It is hard to overstate just how idiotic Tobin's view is. I am an attorney who practiced law for 35 years. Judges have different styles. Some ask questions. Some ask a great many questions. Some interrupt to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to present a coherent argument before them. On the other hand, some judges rarely interrupt, and still others never interrupt. It is a question of style, not substance. To be clear, some judges who ask many questions make clearly erroneous decisions, while others who do not interrupt make proper and wise ones. And it is the decisions that count. As America moves forward, what matters are the outcomes of the cases before the Supreme Court. What matters is who wins and the reasoning presented by the Justices in their opinions which can guide future conduct. The moment after the opinion is handed down, no one cares what was said during the argument. It is like worrying about what happened to an NFL team during practice rather than during the actual game.
Justice Thomas has had an important impact on the Court's decisions of the last twenty years. His opinions are precise and clear. His reasoning is thoughtful and, in my opinion, usually correct. While Tobin may disagree with some of those decisions by the Court, he cannot properly criticize Thomas' work on the Court on that basis. Thomas has done an admirable job as an associate justice of the Court.
So why is it that Toobin writes such nonsense about Justice Thomas? That, of course, is an easy question to answer. Thomas is not only conservative and a constitutional scholar. Those characteristics are not things that a liberal like Toobin would admire. No, even worse, Thomas is African American, something that Toobin simply cannot abide. Oh, the horror: a conservative African American in a position of power and respect. As a liberal journalist, Toobin just loses his grip on reality when faced with such a man and descends into rage and hysteria. That is why Toobin feels the need to comment on Thomas' weight gain during his years on the Court. That is why Toobin is compelled to insult Thomas further by discussing the Justice's "puffy" eyelids as if these somehow demean the quality of his opinions. Only a liberal journalist writing about a conservative black man would actually insult the opinion of a black Supreme Court Justice in a national magazine and think nothing improper had been done. Just imagine if a conservative reporter (assuming one could be found) had written a piece heavy with criticism of the increasing wrinkles, the puffy face or the butch haircut of a female (and liberal) justice. The outrage would have been overwhelming.
Toobin ought to apologize for what he wrote. It was clearly the racism of the left speaking. Americans ought not tolerate it.
What, you make ask, is Thomas' transgression? What is this travesty of conduct that makes Thomas a pariah in Tobin's view? The answer is simple: Thomas does not interrupt lawyers during arguments to ask them questions about what they are saying. Instead, Thomas sits silently and listens to the lawyers and the questions from his colleagues.
It is hard to overstate just how idiotic Tobin's view is. I am an attorney who practiced law for 35 years. Judges have different styles. Some ask questions. Some ask a great many questions. Some interrupt to such an extent that it is nearly impossible to present a coherent argument before them. On the other hand, some judges rarely interrupt, and still others never interrupt. It is a question of style, not substance. To be clear, some judges who ask many questions make clearly erroneous decisions, while others who do not interrupt make proper and wise ones. And it is the decisions that count. As America moves forward, what matters are the outcomes of the cases before the Supreme Court. What matters is who wins and the reasoning presented by the Justices in their opinions which can guide future conduct. The moment after the opinion is handed down, no one cares what was said during the argument. It is like worrying about what happened to an NFL team during practice rather than during the actual game.
Justice Thomas has had an important impact on the Court's decisions of the last twenty years. His opinions are precise and clear. His reasoning is thoughtful and, in my opinion, usually correct. While Tobin may disagree with some of those decisions by the Court, he cannot properly criticize Thomas' work on the Court on that basis. Thomas has done an admirable job as an associate justice of the Court.
So why is it that Toobin writes such nonsense about Justice Thomas? That, of course, is an easy question to answer. Thomas is not only conservative and a constitutional scholar. Those characteristics are not things that a liberal like Toobin would admire. No, even worse, Thomas is African American, something that Toobin simply cannot abide. Oh, the horror: a conservative African American in a position of power and respect. As a liberal journalist, Toobin just loses his grip on reality when faced with such a man and descends into rage and hysteria. That is why Toobin feels the need to comment on Thomas' weight gain during his years on the Court. That is why Toobin is compelled to insult Thomas further by discussing the Justice's "puffy" eyelids as if these somehow demean the quality of his opinions. Only a liberal journalist writing about a conservative black man would actually insult the opinion of a black Supreme Court Justice in a national magazine and think nothing improper had been done. Just imagine if a conservative reporter (assuming one could be found) had written a piece heavy with criticism of the increasing wrinkles, the puffy face or the butch haircut of a female (and liberal) justice. The outrage would have been overwhelming.
Toobin ought to apologize for what he wrote. It was clearly the racism of the left speaking. Americans ought not tolerate it.
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