Talk:Clarence Thomas

To add to article

Should we add a mention of the discussion of Clarence Thomas in the newly released Epstein files to this article? Source: https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%2010/EFTA01660666.pdf ~2025-32865-45 (talk) 22:15, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

I'm getting "we are sorry, the page you're looking for can’t be found on the Department of Justice website" when I try to click through to your source, so I can't verify this information. LieutenantZipp (talk) 07:28, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

"Liberals have made my life miserable for 43 years. I'm gonna make theirs miserable for the next 43."

That was a quote from Thomas from sometime in the 90's, and I'm surprised it isn't mentioned anywhere in the article. If he actually plans to retire in his 43rd year in the court, it would make him the longest-serving associate SCOTUS justice.

It'd be nice to put that in somewhere. ~2026-10175-53 (talk) 06:08, 15 February 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-10175-53: Source? –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 03:50, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

https://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/27/us/2-years-after-his-bruising-hearing-justice-thomas-can-rarely-be-heard.html

"Last year, in a conversation with two of his own law clerks, recent law school graduates chosen for their conservative views, Justice Thomas said he intended to remain on the Court until the year 2034.

Why that long? one asked. Because that would give him a 43-year term, he replied, according to the clerk's account, explaining, 'The liberals made my life miserable for 43 years, and I'm going to make their lives miserable for 43 years.'" LieutenantZipp (talk) 02:28, 18 February 2026 (UTC)

Where can I discover Thomas’s perspective on exactly how liberals have made his life miserable. Having such a priority convictions, makes for an incredibly biased justice/judge, in other words, a justice lacking justice. ThePleasantRealtor (talk) 18:23, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

• a priori convictions

(typo) ThePleasantRealtor (talk) 18:24, 29 June 2026 (UTC)

Rajan Vasisht

Why is Rajan Vasisht not mentioned in the current version of this article? ~2026-20625-89 (talk) 03:10, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

You'd need to explain who Rajan Vasisht is to determine whether he's notable for the purposes of the article. LieutenantZipp (talk) 14:59, 21 April 2026 (UTC)

Originalism

It's quite remarkable that this article says so little about his judicial philosophy, which is originalism. This doctrine underpins and guides most of his judicial opinions. I suggest that we insert the following:

“ Justice Thomas has explained his judicial philosophy in layman's terms, for example in his 2008 Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute:

Let me put it this way; there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution – try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial.[1][2][3]

”

[1] "How to Read the Constitution". The Wall Street Journal. October 20, 2008. Archived from the original on August 22, 2017. Retrieved 26 Jun 2026.

[2] Smith, Christopher (2016). The Supreme Court and the Development of Law Through the Prism of Prisoners' Rights. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 87. Retrieved 26 June 2026.

[3] Raphael, Ray (2013). Constitutional Myths What We Get Wrong and How to Get It Right. The New Press. p. 153. Retrieved 26 June 2026.

If people agree that there is room for more, I would add this:

Critics have argued that Justice Thomas does not consistently apply his originalist principles,[4][5] whereas others characterize his originalism as consistent.[6][7]

[4] "Book Note: Justice Thomas's Inconsistent Originalism" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 121: 1431–1438. 2008. Retrieved 26 Jun 2026.

[5] Kendall, Doug; Ryan, Jim (1 Aug 2007). "Originalist Sins: The faux originalism of Justice Clarence Thomas". Slate (magazine). Retrieved 26 Jun 2026.

[6] Holzer, Henry (2012). The Supreme Court Opinions of Clarence Thomas, 1991–2011, 2d Ed. McFarland & Company. p. 107. Retrieved 26 June 2026.

[7] Thapar, Amul (2023). The People's Justice: Clarence Thomas and the Constitutional Stories that Define Him. Skyhorse Publishing. p. 213. Retrieved 26 June 2026.

Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:47, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

I think we should dedicate a whole section to the topic. It is his judicial philosophy, after all, and he's the most extreme on the Court about it. I've never heard of any other sitting judge advocating "reconsider[ing] Calder [v. Bull] and its progeny"; Calder was decided less than a decade after ratification, and it thus seems to be targeted far less frequently. And he seems to be the only one on the Court to have disavowed stare decisis entirely. And he's also been the most vocal about "temper[ing]" the Commerce Clause "in a manner that both makes sense of [the Court's] more recent case law and is more faithful to the original understanding of that Clause". OzzyMuffin238 (talk) 20:17, 5 July 2026 (UTC)

Here's what the subsection looks like now, notice that he explictly denies wanting to completely abandon stare decisis. I think what we've got in the present subsection is satisfactory for an encyclopedia article like this. If we do add more, I recommend taking one step at a time, so we are careful and accurate. For instance, with regard to Calder v. Bull, SCOTUSBlog gives this information about Ellingburg v. United States which was decided in January of this year (2026): "Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion was only five pages. Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with 'the Court’s opinion in full,' but (joined by Gorsuch) he added 17 pages of historical analysis to suggest that the court has strayed far from the rationale of its first ex post facto opinion, 1798’s Calder v. Bull. Thomas 'would restore Calder’s approach' and reconsider 'what laws would have been subject to the ex post facto clause,' including '[m]any laws that are nominally civil today.'" So it sounds like he wants to restore Calder v. Bull rather than overturn it. Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:11, 6 July 2026 (UTC)

References

Deletion of entire originalism subsection

This edit removed an entire subsection. The edit summary says, "this entire recently-added section is basically a rehash of the first section paragraphs, with an unhelpful block quote and redundant sentences on textualism". The first section is titled "Early life" and I don't see anything about orginalism there. In fact, if we search the whole BLP for the word "originalism", it's only mentioned once, and that's in the bibliograph rather than article text. The word "originalist" is used a bit more; putting aside the sentence in the lead, the preface to the section on his Supreme Court years includes this:

“ He aligned himself with Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom he shared an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation, and sided with him in 92% of cases during his first 13 years on the bench.[d] Over time, Thomas and Scalia's jurisprudence separated,[e] with Thomas favoring stronger emphasis on the Constitution's original understanding and demonstrating greater willingness to overrule precedent [in first paragraph of preface]....Thomas is a proponent of original meaning, incorporating what had been Scalia's narrower approach to the doctrine and the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution, including those espoused in the Declaration of Independence [in third paragraph of preface]. ”

One could argue that the stuff in the third paragraph is redundant to the stuff in the first paragraph, but I think it's fine for a preface to emphasize something by repetition, a little bit. After this preface to his Supreme Court years, originalism isn't mentioned, except for a passing mention in connection with Raich. In my view, originalism is the centerpiece of Thomas's jurisprudence, and it makes no sense to mention it in the preface without elaborating after the preface. It deserves its own subheader not only for navigation purposes, but because readers who see it in the preface will expect to find more in the rest of the Supreme Court section. Here's the subsection titled "Originalist judicial philosophy" that was entirely deleted (footnotes omitted):

“ In a 2008 lecture at the Manhattan Institute, Thomas explained his judicial philosophy as follows: "Let me put it this way: there are really only two ways to interpret the Constitution—try to discern as best we can what the framers intended or make it up. No matter how ingenious, imaginative, or artfully put, unless interpretive methodologies are tied to the original intent of the framers, they have no more basis in the Constitution than the latest football scores. To be sure, even the most conscientious effort to adhere to the original intent of the framers of our Constitution is flawed, as all methodologies and human institutions are; but at least originalism has the advantage of being legitimate and, I might add, impartial." Critics have argued that Thomas does not consistently apply originalist principles, while others consider his originalism consistent. Thomas also adheres to textualism. He does not always put precedent above his respect for originalism or textualism: "I do give respect to precedent, but the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition and our country and our laws and be based on something, not just something that somebody dreamt up and others went along with." ”

This includes lots of stuff that is otherwise completely absent from the rest of the BLP, such as:

(1) why Thomas favors originalism; he actually does have reasons beyond following Scalia's example;
(2) the controversy about whether Thomas actually follows his originalist principles consistently;
(3) how he reconciles originalism with stare decisis (i.e. precedent).

So I hope we can put the subsection back in. As another editor said above, "I think we should dedicate a whole section to the topic. It is his judicial philosophy, after all, and he's the most extreme on the Court about it." As for the word "textualist" it is now completely absent from this BLP, and even the word "textualism" in only used once --- in a footnote. Anythingyouwant (talk) 01:29, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

"this edit removed an entire subsection" — what you leave out here is that you were the one who created this subsection just 2 weeks ago, with the reversion taking place even sooner. We do not accept new subsections like these that are objectionable without discussion, and one comment by another editor doesn't mean a flat consensus.

Simply searching up the term "originalism" and tallying the number of times its mentioned in a word search is a poor way to examine the section's focus on CT's originalism. The topic is actually discussed lots of times in the article, just without repeating the word "originalism" over and over again. Just a selection:

• Thomas noted [...] "the Founders intended that the President have primary responsibility...",
• As in Hamdi, he relied on The Federalist Papers in proposing that the president is responsible for protecting national security
• He wrote that the Court had deviated "from the original understanding of the Commerce Clause" and that the substantial effects test, "if taken to its logical extreme, would give Congress a 'police power' over all aspects of American life"
• Thomas dissented in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), which held that the Controlled Substances Act applies to homegrown marijuana, on the grounds of original meaning.
• Thomas's first opinion on free speech was the 1995 case McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, finding that the Founding Era contained the expansive use of anonymous pamphlets and columns.

And this is deliberate, because it's simply easier to show readers the facts rather than repeating the jargon "originalism" or "originalist", which is much less helpful.

When considering the above, your new section becomes a little redundant. For one, it uses a more than 18-year-old quote by the conservative Manhattan Institute as a statement on CT's originalism now. His interpretation has gotten much more extreme in 18 years. And since then, we have whole books on CT's jurisprudence that are much more up to date, with Staab 2022 and Rossum 2014 being examples, both of which are used in the article already. Also, the second sentence mentioning critics isn't explicitly verified by the two sources. So, instead of blurbing it all into a "originalist judicial philosophy" section, the whole of the "Supreme Court of the United States" and its subsections are already dedicated to explaining CT's originalism/jurisprudence case-by-case. The solution, then, is to expand these sections with more content relevant to CT's originalism rather than creating yet another subsection which by giving just one blockquote 15 years ago and framing it in the present tense is extremely inadequate. Since I already wrote most of what's already written there, I wouldn't mind doing this since I already have the book copies.

Quick note: The first section is titled "Early life" and I don't see anything about orginalism there. Why would we talk about originalism in the Early life section, of all places? Jay-Wiki (talk) 16:13, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Your initial comment referred to "a rehash of the first section" which is the "Early life" section. I will respond further later today. Do you know what happened to the suddenly-vanished editor User:GuardianH who had edited this article quite a bit, and with whom I discussed this originalism stuff? Oh I see, you were GuardianH. Anythingyouwant (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

In that original comment, I meant the first section of the Supreme Court of the United States section. Jay-Wiki (talk) 16:58, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The 18-year-old quote is presented explicitly as his view 18 years ago, without framing it in the present tense. The subsection that you deleted actually begins like this: "In a 2008 lecture at the Manhattan Institute, Thomas explained his judicial philosophy as follows...." So it specifically says these are his words from 18 years ago. Those words are illuminating about his reasoning 18 years ago, and if he has recently changed his reasons for being an originalist then it would be great to explain that too, but I'm not aware that his reasons have changed from 18 years ago, although it's possible he's become more adamant about applying originalism (which would be different from his reasons for favoring originalism). I agree with the other editor (OzzyMuffin238) who told me above "I think we should dedicate a whole section to the topic. It is his judicial philosophy, after all...." Except that a subsection is enough, rather than an entire section. Readers who want to learn about his overall philosophy of judging should be able to go directly to that subject using the TOC, without necessarily having to pick up bits and pieces by reading the entire Wikipedia article. For many years, this BLP had a section (not merely a subsection) titled "Judicial philosophy", so it's clear that many editors in the past thought it was a good idea. I haven't suggested deleting or moving any of the scattered allusions to originalism that you have listed here, they are helpful as you said; but a separate supplementary subsection is helpful too, certainly readers can skip it if they already feel satisfied with the scattered allusions. Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:07, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

@Anythingyouwant I'll follow up in greater detail shortly. I don't disagree that a separate section could be useful, but, when considering that the first four paragraphs of the Supreme Court of the United States is already dedicated to his judicial philosophy, I would maintain that it is not worth having a small separate section on his judicial philosophy, especially one that is far less up-to-date and comprehensive than what is already in the SCOTUS section. Its better to just find a way to put the suggested content in the SCOTUS section, which already exists and covers the material. E.g., we could simply put the 2008 quote in a quotebox alongside the SCOTUS section. Jay-Wiki (talk) 02:46, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

A quotebox like that would be an improvement over status quo, thanks. Please also consider working the other proposed material into that portion of the article. Or we could do the opposite: add a subsection on originalism into the SCOTUS section as I proposed, and also move the originalism material from the preface of that section into the new subsection. Anythingyouwant (talk) 04:42, 20 July 2026 (UTC)