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Clarence Thomas | |
|---|---|
 Official portrait, 2007 | |
| Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States | |
| Assumed office October 23, 1991 | |
| Nominated by | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Thurgood Marshall |
| Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit | |
| In office March 12, 1990 – October 23, 1991 | |
| Nominated by | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Robert Bork |
| Succeeded by | Judith W. Rogers |
| Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission | |
| In office May 6, 1982 – March 8, 1990 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Eleanor Holmes Norton[1] |
| Succeeded by | Evan Kemp[2] |
| Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office for Civil Rights | |
| In office June 26, 1981 – May 6, 1982 | |
| President | Ronald Reagan |
| Preceded by | Cynthia Brown[3] |
| Succeeded by | Harry Singleton[4] |
| Personal details | |
| Born | June 23, 1948 Pin Point, Georgia, U.S. |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 1 |
| Education | |
| Signature |  |
| This article is part of a series on |
| Conservatism in the United States |
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Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American lawyer and jurist who has served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 1991. He was nominated by the U.S. president George H. W. Bush in 1990 to succeed Thurgood Marshall. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and has been its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Since Stephen Breyer's retirement in 2022, he is also the Court's oldest member.
Thomas was born in Pin Point in the U.S. state of Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah, Georgia. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church, but he was frustrated by what he viewed as the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman and graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, especially Thomas Sowell. Upon graduating, he was appointed as an assistant attorney general in Missouri and later entered private practice there. He became a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth in 1979, and was made Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education in 1981. President Ronald Reagan appointed Thomas as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) the next year.
President George H. W. Bush nominated Thomas to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. He served in that role for 19 months before filling Marshall's seat on the Supreme Court. Thomas's confirmation hearings were bitter and intensely fought, centering on an accusation that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill, a subordinate at the Department of Education and the EEOC.[5] The Senate confirmed Thomas by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest margin in a century.[6]
Since the death of Antonin Scalia, Thomas has been the Court's foremost originalist, stressing the original meaning in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.[7] In contrast to Scalia—who had been the only other consistent originalist—he pursues a more classically liberal variety of originalism.[8] Thomas was known for his silence during most oral arguments,[9] though has since begun asking more questions to counsel.[10] He is notable for his majority opinions in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (determining the freedom of religious speech in relation to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (affirming the individual right to bear arms outside the home), as well as his dissent in Gonzales v. Raich (arguing that the U.S. Congress may not criminalize the private cultivation of medical cannabis). He is widely considered to be the Court's most conservative member.
- ^ Annual Report (20th ed.). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1980. p. 9. Archived from the original on March 26, 2022. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
- ^ Combined Annual Report. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 1991. p. 22. Archived from the original on March 26, 2022. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
- ^ "Department of Education Nomination of Cynthia G. Brown To Be Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights | The American Presidency Project". presidency.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
- ^ "Nomination of Harry M. Singleton To Be an Assistant Secretary of Education | The American Presidency Project". presidency.ucsb.edu. Archived from the original on March 26, 2022. Retrieved March 26, 2022.
- ^ Alexander Jr. 1997, p. 378.
- ^ "Roll Call Vote 102nd Congress - 1st Session". U.S. Senate. October 15, 1991. Archived from the original on April 7, 2018. Retrieved May 19, 2020.
- ^ Staab 2022, p. 2.
- ^ Sandefur, Timothy (September 22, 2008). "Clarence Thomas's Jurisprudence Unexplained". New York University Journal of Law & Liberty. Rochester, N.Y.: 535–556. SSRN 1272053.
- ^ Maggs 2017, p. 215.
- ^ Severino, Carrie (August 18, 2021). "Justice Thomas has made the new oral argument format a winner". SCOTUSblog. Retrieved July 9, 2022.