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On the U.S. Supreme Court is a Justice descended from West African slaves and born to a young
mother, not more than 20, in segregated Georgia. Home was Pin Point, among the Gullah-Geechee
and oysters and marshlands. His father left. And a fire took all he had and the shack where he lived.
He was sent to Savannah along with his brother. They lived in their mother’s one-room tenement.
Then, still just a child, taking all his belongings in a half-filled paper grocery bag, he went to live with
his grandparents, Myers and Christine Anderson. It was the longest and most significant journey of
his life. He and his brother flushed the indoor toilet every time they walked by. The kitchen
refrigerator dazzled them.
His grandfather enrolled him in a Catholic school run by Irish nuns. It was a segregated school of
only black children. The Klan marched through Savannah. And Forsyth Park was for whites only.
During the summers, he sawed trees by hand and plowed behind a horse named Lizzie at his
grandfather’s farm—a farm owned since freedom came at long last to his family.
He chose the seminary to finish school, set on becoming a priest. He was at times the only black
seminarian among a sea of white faces. Then came 1968. King was assassinated. Then Kennedy. It
transformed him. He left behind hopes of the priesthood. He found Black Power. He wrote about
revolution. He protested.
He went to law school. He became a father. He worked for legal aid. He saw forced busing and
violence and insolence in South Boston. He devoted himself to doing better for his son.
He took the road less traveled. He went to work for Republican Jack Danforth in the middle of
Missouri. It was his only job offer. Years later, he went to Washington, D.C. He joined the Reagan
administration. He pulled at every thread of his country’s founding and its history—a country that
had simultaneously enslaved his ancestors while declaring “all men are created equal.” He became a
judge. And ultimately, a Justice.
This is the story of Justice Clarence Thomas. It is a story that should be told in every American
classroom, at every American kitchen table, in every anthology of American dreams realized.
It is a story we’ve heard told from the man himself, for it is the story of our former boss. We are his
former law clerks. We’ve had a front-row seat to the Justice at work. Justice Thomas is a man of
greatest intellect, of greatest faith, and of greatest patriotism. We know because we lived it. He is a
man of unwavering principle. He welcomes the lone dissent. He is also a man of great humor and
warmth and generosity. Walk the halls, and you’ll hear his laugh. Call, and he answers. His
grandfather’s sayings become our sayings. His chambers become our chambers—a place fueled by
unstoppable curiosity and unreturned library books, all to get every case just right. Those chambers
become a way station for other Justices’ clerks too—a place where wisdom is freely shared by the
man who made his way from Pin Point to the Supreme Court’s marbled halls.
And yet, the stories most often told of Justice Thomas are not these. The Justice is ever the subject
of political headlines taking aim at his character, his judicial philosophy, his marriage, even his race.
They attempt to write over his actual story. Lately, the stories have questioned his integrity and his
ethics for the friends he keeps. They bury the lede. These friends are not parties before him as a
Justice of the Court. And these stories are malicious, perpetuating the ugly assumption that the
Justice cannot think for himself. They are part of a larger attack on the Court and its legitimacy as an
institution. The picture they paint of the Court and the man for whom we worked bears no
resemblance to reality.
As his law clerks, we offer this response. Different paths led us to our year with Justice Thomas, and
we have followed different paths since. But along the way, we all saw with our own eyes the same
thing: His integrity is unimpeachable. And his independence is unshakable, deeply rooted seven
decades ago as that young child who walked through the door of his grandparents’ house for a life
forever changed.
Justice Thomas has never strayed from those beginnings. A bust of his grandfather—himself raised
by a grandmother born into slavery—watches over his office. It is an ever-present reminder that he
is no ordinary Justice. Come the first Monday in October, the Justice, born into poverty few can
fathom and educated in a segregated Savannah school room, will take the bench and begin his thirty-
third year on the U.S. Supreme Court. He will ask a question most haven’t considered. And he will
cast his votes and write opinions based on his mind alone.
We are proud to have been his clerks and to remain his friends, and we unequivocally reject attacks
on his integrity, his character, or his ethics.
Bijan Aboutorabi
John Adams
Russell Balikian
Matthew Berry
Steven G. Bradbury
David A. Bragdon
Christine M. Buzzard
Madeline W. Clark
Jonathan Cohn
Philip M. Cooper
Michael Corcoran
Richard M. Corn
Steven T. Cottreau
Brendan P. Cullen
Gilbert Dickey
Jennifer B. Dickey
Josh Divine
Victoria Dorfman
Robert Dunn
John C. Eastman
John A. Eisenberg
Claire Evans
Chantel Febus
Andrew N. Ferguson
Matthew A. Fitzgerald
Janet Galeria
Laurie Gallancy
Nicole Stelle Garnett
James E. Gauch
Christopher C. Goodnow
Eric Grant
Tyler R. Green
Jennifer Hardy
Sarah M. Harris
Dan Himmelfarb
James C. Ho
John M. Hughes
Laura Ingraham
Erik S. Jaffe
Ashley E. Johnson
Eric J. Kadel, Jr.
Brittney Lane Kubisch
Christopher Landau
Brian Charles Lea
Thomas R. Lee
Brandt Leibe
Robert Leider
Elbert Lin
Caroline Cook Lindsay
Steven J. Lindsay
Brian M. Lipshutz
Wendy Stone Long
Arthur S. Long
Brinton Lucas
Sigal Mandelker
Kevin Marshall
Jennifer L. Mascott
Eric McArthur
Diane McGimsey
Marah Stith McLeod
Taylor A.R. Meehan
Gregory F. Miller
Jack L. Millman
Christopher Mills
Kasdin Mitchell
Kathryn Kimball Mizelle
David Morrell
Brian P. Morrissey
Adam K. Mortara
Eric C. Nelson
Matthew B. Nicholson
Cameron T. Norris
Patrick L. O'Daniel
Michael O'Neill
Martha M. Pacold
Elizabeth Papez
William Peterson
Patrick F. Philbin
Sai Prakash
Craig Primis
M. Scott Proctor
Haley N. Proctor
Austin L. Raynor
Matt Rice
Rebekah Ricketts
Allison J. Rushing
Ann Scarlett
Brian Schmalzbach
Carrie Campbell Severino
Daniel Shapiro
Arnon D. Siegel
Kristen Silverberg
Laura Wolk Slavis
Hannah Smith
Jacob T. Spencer
Robert Stander
Scott G. Stewart
David Stras
Michelle S. Stratton
Patrick Strawbridge
Heath P. Tarbert
Karl Tilleman
Kate Todd
Amy Upshaw
Jonathan D. Urick
Manuel Valle
Helgi Walker
Jeffrey B. Wall
Henry C. Whitaker
John F. Wood
Katherine Yarger
John Yoo |
