Jane Mayer on the Ethical Questions About Justice Clarence Thomas

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Barack, Washington, Wickenden, News, Obama, Politics, Wnyc, Lizza, President

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2023

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

In theory, the Justices of the Supreme Court are immune to influence, with no campaigns to finance and no higher positions to angle for. But a cascade of revelations published by ProPublica concerning Justice Clarence Thomas—island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron, undisclosed real-estate transactions—raises questions about his proximity to power and money. Judges “are supposed to be honest, they’re supposed to be independent,” Jane Mayer tells David Remnick. “And I think it stretches common sense to think that a judge could be independent when he takes that much money from one person.” Mayer co-wrote the book “Strange Justice,” about Clarence Thomas, almost thirty years ago, and last year reported on Ginni Thomas’s influence in Washington. She notes that other Justices, including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have accepted large gifts from politically connected donors. A deepening public distrust in the integrity of the Supreme Court, Mayer thinks, is dangerous for democracy. “The glue that holds us together is the rule of law in this country,” she says. “People have to believe when they go in front of a court—and in particular the Supreme Court—that they’re getting a fair shake . . . that it’s justice that’s going to prevail.”

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1:12.5	This is the political scene, and I'm David Remnick.
1:23.2	Compared to presidents and legislators, the justices of the Supreme Court are beholden to no one.
1:30.4	Concerned only with the law, with the Constitution, they pretend to sit majestically, serenely beyond grubby politics.
1:39.2	They have no campaigns to finance, no higher positions to angle for.
1:46.7	This is the source of their integrity,
1:52.5	or at least that's the theory. But the cascade of revelations coming out about Justice Clarence Thomas suggests something else, something far less high-flown. There's the glitzy vacations
1:58.7	and the island-hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron. There's the glitzy vacations and the island hopping yachting adventures underwritten by a right-wing billionaire patron.
2:04.5	There's the undisclosed real estate deals.
2:07.4	And then there's Thomas's wife, Ginny Thomas, and her ties, financial and political, to various conservative groups, as well as her full-throated support of Donald Trump and the attempt to overturn the
2:19.5	2020 presidential election. There are perhaps precedents for this kind of thing, but Thomas
	...

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