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Being a Justice

October 04, 2007 12:48 PM

Justice Thomas’s memoir spans his life up until 1991, ending when he was sworn in and heading into his first conference with his new colleagues. Sixteen years have passed since then, and although Thomas chose not to write about those years, he did talk with me about his thoughts on the law, the Court and what those early days were like.

I’m going to spend the next week or so writing about those conversations, but I thought we’d start by first looking back to those first weeks when Thomas, exhausted and nearly broken by his brutal confirmation hearings, joined the Supreme Court.

Thomas had missed the first month of arguments because of hearings, and he faced a crushing amount of work just to catch up. Other justices have talked about what it’s like to suddenly become “Justice” and feel unsure of where to even begin. Sandra Day O’Connor told me in a 2005 interview, “there’s no how-to-do-it manual for a Supreme Court justice,” and said she figured out some things by trial and error.

“One of the things you learn in this business is when you show up, everyone sort of assumes that if you were nominated to come here, you can figure out your job,” Thomas said, laughing. “They offer to help, but they sort of look at you in a way, ‘Now, I’m going to be kind enough to offer; you should be kind enough not to take me up.’”

Thomas had been on the D.C. Circuit for 19 months, so his transition was in some ways easier than for judges who’d come from state courts, like O’Connor. But it was an adjustment nonetheless, and Thomas wanted to meet with each of his new colleagues individually.

In those early weeks, he spent two and a half hours talking with newly retired Justice Thurgood Marshall. Thomas, of course, had taken the seat of Marshall--to the outrage of civil rights groups who believed Thomas was not a worthy successor.

I asked Thomas how he felt about that the criticism. He bristled—then said it was only because he was black. And he said Marshall himself encouraged him to go his own way.

“Justice Ginsburg replaced Justice White. Did anybody say she was unworthy to replace Justice White? They were different. They’re quite different,” Thomas said of the liberal Ruth Bade Ginsburg taking the place of the more conservative Byron White. “So why do you ask that question about black people? You see what I’m saying? That’s absurd.

“The amazing thing to me is that people don’t see the absurdity of it—that a white can replace a white, and there’s no question,” Thomas continued. “They’re quite different. But you never say, ‘Are they worthy to replace this particular person?’ You can say, well, these views are going to change, is the Court line-up going to change, etc. That’s all fair game.”

The Court did change when Ginsburg took the place of White, who had opposed abortion rights and generally voted with conservatives. When Thomas replaced Marshall, Court watchers believed it wouldn’t tip the balance—the Court appeared firmly conservative at that point.

“I am grateful that I had the opportunity to sit down with Justice Marshall himself for quite some time,” Thomas said. “His attitude was that it was up to me to do in my time what I have to do—as he did in his time what he had to do. Those were his words to me.”

Thomas also got some advice from retired Justice Lewis Powell, who had been so helpful to O’Connor when she first arrived at the Court.

“One thing he told me was that when you reach a point when you think you belong here, it’s time for you to leave,” Thomas said of his conversation with Powell. “In other words, there’s a humility you have to have about your role. And if you start having this expansive view of yourself and your role…you cease being a judge. It is a requirement that you be quite humble about what your role is.”

Thomas seems to think no Justice has better filled that role that Byron White. He developed a friendship with White, and it’s clear he holds him in enormously high regard—he referred to him several times during our talk. He called him “just an outstanding human being,” and he ticked off some of his accomplishments: “He was one of the greatest athletes this country’s ever seen. He’s a Rhodes Scholar, as was his brother. He went to Yale Law School, and he was as unassuming a person as you would ever meet.”

“He did his job honestly. He didn’t worry about what was reported about it. He didn’t have an agenda,” Thomas said of White. “He didn’t worry about a legacy. He just did his job. He did it as best he could.”

And White’s words to Thomas in their first meeting have remained with him for 16 years.

“What he said to me was, when I got here, was that, ‘It doesn’t matter how you got here. What matters now is what you do here,’” Thomas recalled.

“And I’ve always sort of thought of that,” Thomas said. “You have to do your job in a particular way. What matters is what you do here, not what happened on the way here.”

When ABC News producer Howard Rosenberg and I followed Thomas and his wife Virginia to her home state of Nebraska for a football game between the Cornhuskers and the USC Trojans, Thomas returned to his own view of “legacy.”  If you saw our Nightline pieces (you can see Part one here and Part two here), you know Thomas is a huge fan of Nebraska football and has developed close relationships with the players. He spoke to the team at mid-field the day before the game.

“From time to time,” Thomas told the players kneeling around him in rapt attention, “I’m asked by people—they love to ask members of the Supreme Court—‘what’s your legacy?  What do you hope to do?  How do you hope to be remembered?’

“I have a simple answer. All I want to be remembered as is a person who tried to do his best,” Thomas told the players. “Nothing more, nothing less. A person who’s tried to do his best.”

That’s not far from what Marshall himself had to say in 1991, when a reporter asked him how he wanted to be remembered: “He did the best he could with what he had,” Marshall said.

And that’s a pretty good way to turn the conversation to what Thomas has done on the Court—and why he takes some of the positions he does. But first up tomorrow: what Thomas really thinks about oral arguments.

October 4, 2007 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

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Posted by: Rohini | Oct 4, 2007 4:11:14 PM

Posted by: R. Watson | Oct 4, 2007 4:27:45 PM

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