Clarence Thomas
Sam Baker at Axios:
The big picture: Thomas has spent years essentially laying out a whole parallel understanding of the law. He’s one of the court’s most prolific authors of solo dissents, according to Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS, and has also written a slew of solo concurrences similar to last week's.Thomas doesn't just write a dissent here and an additional point about a majority holding there, but rather has created a whole ecosystem of opinions that build on and reference each other almost in the same way as the court’s actual precedents, except for the fact that they are all one man speaking only for himself.
Thomas’ solo opinion in last week’s abortion case cited 11 of his past opinions, 10 of which were solo opinions. It drew more heavily from the Clarence Thomas Cinematic Universe than from the rest of the court’s historical precedents, dissents and non-Thomas concurrences.
But as the makeup of the court has shifted around him, Thomas’ views have gotten more influential. And that influence will only grow.“There’s this whole array of concurring and dissenting opinions that are now available for the majority on the court to take more seriously,” said Ralph Rossum, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who wrote a book about Thomas.
Thomas has been able to “plow the field and plant the seeds” that other justices would later “harvest” for their own majority opinions, even if they didn’t join Thomas at the outset, Rossum said. “You see that coming to fruition again on abortion,” Rossum said.
Details: The Supreme Court has protected rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, same-sex intercourse and contraception under the same legal doctrine, known as “substantive due process.”Thomas rejects that entire theory, and so he would throw out every ruling that relies on it.
“That's classic Thomas. There isn't a justice on the court less committed to reliance on precedent than Thomas,” Rossum said. He said Thomas believes the court spends too much time interpreting its own work and too little time on the Constitution.
