Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This in-depth look at the life of Clarence Thomas, who has kept a low public profile for over a decade, is a refreshing change. Foskett, a journalist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, focuses on Thomas's growth—from his upbringing at the hands of a strict grandfather through his time at Yale Law School and his eventual, albeit controversial, ascension to the Supreme Court. Relying on a mixture of secondary sources and oral interviews, Foskett delves into Thomas's intellectual development, from a flirtation with black power in college to his embrace of the natural law philosophy that dictates his strict reading of the Constitution. While Foskett leaves no stone unturned in detailing Thomas's history, he occasionally is less effective at connecting the dots: is there a connection between Thomas's strict upbringing, his attendance at religious schools and his hard-line judicial philosophy? Foskett is occasionally critical of Thomas (he notes a scandal that dogged Thomas when he headed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), but mainly argues that Thomas's legal mind has been unfairly criticized because he's a black conservative. Foskett's conclusion that Thomas was likely more truthful at his Senate confirmation hearings than Anita Hill will be a turnoff to some. But those able to suspend political judgment will learn a lot about the court's most controversial justice.
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From The Washington Post

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a fascinating subject for a biography. Born in 1948 into a broken home in Pin Point, Ga., he suffered from racial slights and isolation in the early phases of desegregation, obtained a law degree from Yale (one year behind Bill and Hillary Clinton) and worked for a few years as an obscure lawyer-bureaucrat before shrewdly hitching himself to the Reagan Revolution. President Reagan appointed him to lead the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education and then chose him to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1990, the first President Bush nominated him to a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals and a year later nominated him to fill the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the legendary Thurgood Marshall.

At precisely that point, however, Thomas encountered a reversal of fortune that almost destroyed his career. In televised confirmation hearings he was charged with incompetence, indifference to the plight of racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, pornophilia and sexual harassment. A former aide, Anita Hill, alleged that he had imposed upon her with lewd talk and that he had threatened to ruin her professionally if she ever revealed his misconduct. Thomas ultimately prevailed, but only after a brutal struggle in the Senate during which he obtained the requisite number of votes by the slimmest margin (52 to 48) of any Supreme Court nominee in American history.

In the decade that he has served as a justice, Thomas has voted to reverse Roe v. Wade, to uphold the constitutionality of a law that criminalized consensual sex between adult homosexuals, and to invalidate racial affirmative action at the workplace, in schools and in electoral politics. He has not only expressed conservative beliefs in judicial opinions; he has also done so in speeches, in the selection of his law clerks and in social affiliations that have led to such gestures as officiating at Rush Limbaugh's wedding. Armed with life tenure, Thomas is the most securely rooted African American in the highest circles of government. He obtained his position in no small measure because of the racial allegiance of blacks who yearned to see the elevation of "one of their own" even if they disagreed with his policies. Yet some who initially supported his confirmation have now renounced him. Among professional blacks, especially lawyers, he is widely ostracized and routinely vilified as an "Uncle Tom." Detractors have succeeded in making his very name a synonym for opportunism; for many blacks, to pull a Clarence Thomas means to sell out.

Although Justice Thomas has already attracted a considerable amount of attention, his unfolding career continues to offer new avenues for journalistic and academic investigation. Unfortunately, Ken Foskett's new biography, Judging Thomas, is an opportunity squandered. An investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Foskett displays no sustained interest in Thomas's judicial handiwork. He vaguely describes a few of Thomas's most widely reviewed opinions up to 1995 and then ignores almost wholly Thomas's subsequent decisions. He allots no attention at all to Thomas's key vote (for Bush) in the Court's 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore.

Foskett titles his book Judging Thomas but offers no framework for doing so. He echoes Thomas in rightly criticizing detractors who condemn rulings about which they are ignorant. Yet Foskett himself neglects to pay his subject the courtesy of seriously considering the legal work that is presumably at the center of any justice's professional life. Symptomatic is his treatment of Thomas's allegiance to "originalism." Originalism holds that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the intentions of its original framers and ratifiers. Unfortunately, Foskett offers no guidance regarding the merits and demerits of originalism. He neither probes nor even mentions the difficulty posed by the likelihood that had the Supreme Court applied the robust version of originalism that Justice Thomas has endorsed, it would have upheld rather than invalidated racial segregation in schooling and anti-miscegenation laws. (This is, of course, notably paradoxical inasmuch as Justice Thomas is married to a white woman in a state that prohibited marriage across the race line until the Supreme Court barred it from doing so in the most aptly titled case in all of American legal history -- Loving v. Virginia).

The absence of rigor that characterizes Foskett's approach to Thomas's jurisprudence also characterizes his approach to Thomas's racial politics. Foskett could have made a useful contribution by merely describing Thomas's thought in detail. How does Thomas reconcile his championing of "color blindness" with his assertion to the predominantly black National Bar Association that he feels "a special responsibility to help our people"? Where on the spectrum of black public opinion are Thomas's views? Are they as atypical as some detractors suggest? Or are his views, especially his socio-cultural sentiments, more popular than often recognized? Slighted in Foskett's account, these are questions that would at least be broached in a good biography. Foskett sheds disappointingly little light on a question that is at the heart of ongoing battles over Thomas's reputation: Was he truthful or deceitful in his testimony under oath before the Senate during his infamous confirmation hearing? With respect to Anita Hill's testimony that Thomas harassed her sexually, Foskett forgoes close analysis of competing claims and instead limits himself to a rather conclusory character defense. "Bullying a woman," he writes, "simply wasn't in Thomas' nature." Foskett is similarly superficial in his approach to an aspect of the hearings that is even more troubling than Hill's allegations in terms of what it reveals about both Thomas and the Senate that confirmed him. In replies to questions, Thomas stated that he had never "debated" Roe v. Wade and had come to no decision in his own mind as to whether it had been properly decided. If this response was true, it disclosed a disturbingly isolated jurist who might well have been viewed as too incurious, too indifferent, too ignorant to sit on the nation's highest court. If this response was false, it disclosed a jurist willing to disregard an oath and lie to the Senate.

A book that Foskett never even mentions -- the strongly partisan, pro-Thomas biography by Andrew Peyton Thomas (no relation to the justice) -- reveals that, in striking contrast to his testimony, the nominee had in fact discussed Roe with friends and allies and had already developed an antipathy to it. Andrew Peyton Thomas describes his subject's replies to questioning as "misleading" and notes that even some of the justice's strongest supporters were distressed by what they perceived as his lying. Now one might possibly concede that Thomas lied but nonetheless support his confirmation on the grounds that confirmation hearings are understood by those "in the know" as rituals in which the Senate actually demands and expects a substantial amount of untruthfulness on the part of a nominee. The justice himself is reported by Andrew Peyton Thomas to have stated, following his searing experience, that "There is an inherent dishonesty in the system. It says, don't be yourself. If you are yourself, like [Robert] Bork, you're dead." Is this an admission of dishonesty? If it is, ought it be excused? These are the sorts of knotty issues that should be of compelling interest in a book aimed at judging Thomas. Foskett, however, minimizes, overlooks or evades them.

Finally, a lamentable carelessness suffuses Foskett's narrative. Sometimes it shows up in simple errors. Michael Harrington did not write How the Other Half Lives; that classic was written by Jacob Riis; Harrington wrote The Other America. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was not "the first white man at the Justice Department to lift a finger for black folk." In the 1950s, Attorney General Herbert Brownell and other white officials made sure that the Justice Department filed amicus curiae briefs supporting the NAACP in its attack on Jim Crow segregation in Brown v. Board of Education and other landmark cases. In other instances, Foskett's negligence displays itself in his handling of evidence. He often treats memory -- recollections of a situation or event -- as tantamount to history -- what actually occurred. Repeatedly he quotes people whom he interviewed -- usually Thomas's friends, allies, subordinates and colleagues -- and offers their statements as evidence of a given proposition without establishing why these sources ought to be believed despite the risk that sycophancy, collegiality or some other sort of potentially biasing influence has distorted their testimony.

A related difficulty arises when Foskett quotes someone who, describing Justice Thomas in high school, speaks of the confidence that he derived from excelling in sports. The problem is that this friend, the commentator Armstrong Williams, did not even meet Thomas until much later -- long after the justice had finished his schooling. Clearly what Williams was offering to Foskett was not his own firsthand impression but rather something he heard from someone else. Perhaps Foskett decided to use Williams's remark after taking into account its attenuated value as hearsay. Yet one wonders -- to be candid, one doubts -- whether Foskett gave this matter much thought.

Although Judging Thomas is marred by other deficiencies, cataloguing them would be of marginal use. Hopefully before long there will be a new biography that examines with care the life and times of the nation's 106th Supreme Court justice.

Reviewed by Randall Kennedy
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060527218
• ISBN-13: 978-0060527211
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,376,294 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Balanced Biography of a Most Controversial Justice, August 23, 2004

By	Ronald H. Clark (WASHINGTON, DC USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Any book about the current Supreme Court's most controversial justice is not going to please everybody. Thomas remains radioactive as a topic even after more than a decade on the Court. The author, an investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however has written a fairly balanced biography that neither embraces Thomas nor condemns him. In fact, although the author did not have access to the Justice's private papers and correspondence, he did extensively interact with Thomas in covering the Court and in researching this volume. This is not to say the book is without deficiencies. The most notable problem is that a very limited amount of attention is devoted to Thomas's decisions. Instead, readers are referred by the author to Gerber's First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas for in-depth analysis. The focus here is predominantly biographical and that has strengths and weaknesses in doing a judicial biography. The acid test of any Thomas biography, of course, is the Anita Hill controversy; here the author is somewhat too inclined to stake out an unsatisfying middle position: "Although it was plausible that Thomas said what Hill alleged, it seems implausible that he said it all in the manner Hill described"(at 251). Whatever one's views of Thomas, this book does afford a valuable insight into the forces that shaped him and how he ended up arriving on the Court. It will be interesting to see how Thomas's own forthcoming autobiography addresses the same issues as are covered here.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A balanced biography of an intriguing man, September 21, 2004

By	A. McNeely - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Several years ago, The Weekly Standard ran a cover story calling Clarence Thomas the most powerful conservative in America. He truly was at that time.

Foskett does a fair job stripping away the controversy and polemic to examine the man, his background, and his life. There is obviously the story of Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, and a fair amount of time is devoted to those few weeks in the Justice's life. Far more interesting than that is his life before Washington, and before the political appointments, while he was still growing up under the stern eye of his grandfather, Myers Anderson.

Without understanding the world that incubated Thomas it is impossible to understand why he could view the world and the American judicial system as he does. To understand Clarence Thomas more fully one must understand Myers Anderson, the dominant force in his early years. Foskett accounts for the apartheid caste system of the Jim Crow south that trapped and warped so many people.

Passionate reactions about Thomas will exist for a long, long time. His ideas stand on their own merit. This book truly gives the reader a glimpse at the humanity of a man who thinks for himself and will set the judicial tenor of the court for years to come.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Dispassionate, Inspirational Biography , September 6, 2004

By	Steve Iaco (northern new jersey) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Few people are dispassionate about Clarence Thomas, but the author manages to hold passion in abeyance in presenting a well balanced -- and in many ways, inspirational -- review of the Supreme Court Justice's life and times. Love him or loathe him, it's hard for any reader not to come away from this book with enhanced respect for Thomas. . . for his success in overcoming obstacles in Jim Crow southern Georgia; for his equanimity and courage during the Senate confirmation process; and for the personal warmth and compassion that he masks behind a taciturn, often dour public demeanor. The author goes to great lengths to show how the values forged by Thomas's grandfather, Myers Anderson -- self-reliance, industriousness, relentless work ethic, pride, individual charity, skepticism toward government -- have helped to inform the Justice's worldview. The reader does not have to march in lockstep with Thomas's views to admire his Horatio Alger lifestory.