(PatrioticPost.com)- During a speech at the University of Notre Dame last Thursday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas criticized some of his colleagues for taking on the role of legislators and politicians. Arguing that judges shouldn’t be making policy or basing decisions on their personal feelings or religious beliefs, Thomas said that the Court used to be considered the least dangerous branch of government, but now, because of that, it has become the most dangerous branch.
It is no longer about “winning or losing at the court,” Thomas explained. Instead, it is “about the entire country and the idea of this country.”
Thomas cautioned the nation’s leaders against allowing others to “manipulate our institutions” when they don’t get the outcome they want.
While he did not directly address the Democrats’ demands to pack the Court or President Biden’s so-called commission studying court-packing and other changes to the structure of the federal bench, Thomas did quote his grandfather saying, “After you’ve done that, and now what? What’s your next step?”
Justice Thomas also addressed the division and current political polarization happening in the United States. Reflecting on his childhood growing up in the segregated South, Thomas told the crowd that Americans have gotten to the point “where we’re really good at finding something that separates us.”
One attendee asked Justice Thomas if he believed that his Catholic faith created a conflict with legal questions confronted on the bench.
While he admitted that early on in his career it was very hard to square his personal opinions or policy preferences that were in conflict with a case, he said he doesn’t do much hand-wringing in his opinions or tell people “Oh, I’m really sad” because that is not the role of a judge. Instead, he said “You do your job and you go cry alone.”
Regarding the focus on this kind of conflict, Thomas had harsh criticism for the American corporate news media whom he said have helped to politicize the Court. Thomas said it is the media that makes it sound as if a Justice always go right to his personal preference. Using the abortion debate, Thomas explained that if the media thinks you are anti-abortion, they just assume “that’s the way you always will come out.”
In other words, Thomas went on, the media think that Justices are like politicians, and for him, that is a problem. By treating judges like politicians, the media only jeopardize the people’s faith in America’s legal institutions.
