Thursday, August 05, 2004

Misleading Article

This Legal Times article has a misleading headline: "The Bombshell in the Clarence Thomas Biography." What's the "bombshell"?
It's a comment from Justice Antonin Scalia, whom critics have suggested is Thomas' ideological guide on the high court.

Thomas, says Scalia, "doesn't believe in stare decisis, period."

"If a constitutional line of authority is wrong, he would say let's get it right," says Scalia. "I wouldn't do that."
Any reader of the Supreme Court's opinions couldn't have missed the fact that for over a decade, Thomas has routinely written separate opinions suggesting that the Court should reconsider old precedents that may be wrong. Perhaps the record is held by Thomas's concurrence in Eastern Enterprises v. Apfel, where he suggested that the Court should revisit a 1798 case by which the Ex Post Facto Clause has been limited to criminal cases for the past 200 years.

UPDATE: The author of the new biography has a website devoted to the book.

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