Justice Clarence Thomas
Today’s Justice of the Day is: CLARENCE THOMAS. Justice Thomas took the Judicial Oath to officially join the Supreme Court of the United States on this day, October 23, in 1991.
Justice Thomas was born in 1948 in Savannah, Georgia, in the southeastern part of the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He came from humble beginnings, growing up in poverty in the small rural community of Pin Point, Georgia, mostly without the presence of his father, who left while he was very young. Justice Thomas’ mother eventual chose to send him and his brother away to live with their grandfather, the man who Justice Thomas has credited with putting him on the path to a better life. He eventually attended the College of the Holy Cross, graduating with a B.A. in 1971, before earning a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1974.
Immediately upon graduation from law school, Justice Thomas began a three-year term as an Assistant Attorney General in Jefferson City, Missouri, after which he spent two years working as an attorney for the Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1979, he became a Legislative Aide to United States Senator John C. Danforth of Missouri. Justice Thomas left that position after he joined the United States Department of Education as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in 1981, and remained there until 1982, the year he began serving as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1990, he took office as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where he would remain until his elevation to the SCUS.
Justice Thomas was nominated by President George H.W. Bush on July 8, 1991, to a seat vacated by Justice Thurgood Marshall. He was confirmed by the United States Senate, after a famously contentious nomination process, on October 15, and received his commission on October 18. Justice Thomas has served on the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts, and is the fourth most senior Member of the SCUS. He is an actively serving Justice.
Justice Thomas has proven to be one of the most consequential Members of the SCUS by virtue of both the circumstances of his appointment and his advocacy for conservative ideas. The fact that he replaced Justice Marshall, one of liberals’ most beloved Members of the SCUS in that institution’s history, has permanently (so far, at least) altered the balance of the Court’s ideological composition, empowering its right-leaning block at the expense of its more left-leaning Justices. Justice Thomas’ advocacy has also proven formidable, and has enjoyed much (though not total) success in, to use the words of journalist Jeffrey Toobin, importing “once outré conservative ideas” into the SCUS’s mainstream.