https://www.scotusblog.com/202...rence-thomass-court/
This is an excellent article about Justice Clarence Thomas. I have long admired the man, but even more having read this monograph.

John Roberts is the chief. But it’s Clarence Thomas’s court.
By James Romoser
on Oct 2, 2022 at 7:00 pm

"When the Supreme Court returns to the bench on Monday for its first oral arguments of the new term, Justice Clarence Thomas almost certainly will ask the first question.

Thomas, who was appointed in 1991, is the court’s longest-serving justice and was for many years its most taciturn member. He famously went a decade without asking a single question. But when the court tweaked its argument format during the pandemic, Thomas began speaking up. He now interrogates the lawyers during nearly every case, often marking the terrain on which the case will be fought.

The other justices have even agreed to defer to Thomas at the start of each argument before jumping in themselves. The rationale is that Thomas, a stickler for politeness, dislikes interrupting the advocates or his colleagues. But it’s hard not to view the arrangement as symbolic of Thomas’s remarkable ascendance. Long considered an outlier on the court’s right flank, Thomas is now the intellectual leader of a conservative transformation that the six Republican-appointed justices are ushering into American law.

Few would have predicted it. Perhaps not even Thomas himself. In his second term, he boasted that he was “proudly and unapologetically irrelevant and anachronistic.” Back then, his commitment to originalism — the idea that the Constitution’s language should be interpreted solely according to how the words were understood when they were written — made him an ideological oddity, even among many conservatives. And his no-compromises approach alienated moderates like former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.


...


If the 74-year-old justice is reaping a bounty, it’s because he’s been planting seeds for decades. In particular, three issues have long motivated Thomas above all others. The first is guns. The second is rights. The third is race.

On guns, Thomas pioneered a robust interpretation of the Second Amendment before it became conservative dogma. As a justice, he first floated the idea that the amendment guarantees a “personal right” (his emphasis) to own firearms in a solo concurrence in 1997. It took 11 years for five justices to adopt that position in District of Columbia v. Heller — at least as applied to guns kept in the home. Thomas wasn’t satisfied, though. In the years after Heller, he urged the court to take up more gun cases and further expand the amendment’s scope. When the court turned down those cases, Thomas wrote dissent after dissent, castigating his colleagues for treating the Second Amendment as a “constitutional orphan” and a “disfavored right.”

Earlier this year, he finally prevailed. In his majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen — probably the most important opinion Thomas has ever written — he extended the right first recognized in Heller beyond the walls of the home, so the Second Amendment now protects individuals who wish to carry concealed handguns in public. Most significantly, he enshrined originalism as the legal test for analyzing gun-control measures. Rather than looking at contemporary evidence about gun violence, courts must now strike down any gun restriction unless an “analogous” regulation existed centuries ago. "



More in the linked article, and worth the read.

roberts is a joke, Clarence Thomas is an American hero

Don't kid yourself, Roberts and his ego aren't going to survive very well in this environment. Expect lots of votes from him siding with the wingnuts on the court. Clarence 'is' the cornerstone of the Constitutional court.

quote:

Originally posted by bigdeal:
Don't kid yourself, Roberts and his ego aren't going to survive very well in this environment. Expect lots of votes from him siding with the wingnuts on the court. Clarence 'is' the cornerstone of the Constitutional court.

Just another wonderful gift from Bush II.

Good read

Thomas has helped the conservative cause in myriad ways in recent years but our hope can’t be in 9 robes.

Too bad we can’t get a few more like him as well as a Scalia clone or two. This country would ride like it was on rails.

quote:

Originally posted by 911Boss:
Too bad we can’t get a few more like him as well as a Scalia clone or two. This country would ride like it was on rails.

I'm hoping to see Ted Cruz in SCOTUS one day, he's only 51 now and I think his greatest contribution to this country would be as a justice.

I dream of the court ruling that progressive taxation violates the Equal Protection Clause.

Hey, a guy can dream.

Thanks for this thread RichardC. The following link, a “The Truth about Guns” article, has a good photo of Justice Thomas. I love his good-humoured demeanour.

Romoser: Bruen Was the Culmination of a Decades-Long Effort by Justice Clarence Thomas
https://www.google.com/amp/s/w...clarence-thomas/amp/