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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Clarence Thomas has suffered the slings and arrows of being a public figure for decades but the pain has been compounding recently as every month brings new revelations of improprieties, and past offenses get rehashed ad nauseum in the press.
So when he attacks New York Times v. Sullivan, the unanimous 1964 landmark libel ruling granting the press wide latitude to criticize public figures, is he gravely opining based on judicial precedent or squeezing out sour grapes for picking on his questionable activities and those of his Trump-aholic wife?
Thomas claims the Sullivan decision allows the fourth estate to cast “false aspersions on public figures with near impunity” – but are those “false aspersions” false? Or just truths the Justice would prefer remain in the closet so he can enjoy the dubious benefits of a lifestyle feathered by his transgressions out of the public’s eye?
Consistent rulings that favor his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow’s real estate businesses are a matter of public record. As are misogyny, congenital lying, years of gifted trips, and a propensity to select cases for the Court to consider that track the political conservatism of the activist Federalist Society which ostensibly supports only originalist interpretations of the U.S. Constitution.
In fact, two-thirds of those elevated to float down the rarified corridors of the Supreme Court –six of its current members, were promoted by and are affiliated with the Federalist Society.
This organization was created in 1982 to challenge liberal leanings spreading across America in the wake of the societal upheavals of the 1960s. It spired to use the judicial branch of government to put the genie of social evolution and progress back in the bottle; turn back the sand of time to embrace the paternalistic conservatism of the Jim Crow era that favored unfettered corporate profiteering at the expense of everyone else in society.
If Clarence Thomas is truly a purveyor of judicial purity and was not put on the Supreme Court to sponsor conservative judicial activism, what basis does he have for any position that expressly contradicts Thomas Jefferson who in 1786 wrote that: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
And what a few years later in James Madison’s early draft of the First Amendment read: “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be inviolable.”
Ironically, the Federalist Society’s logo is a silhouette of Constitution draftsman James Madison.
The U.S. Senate pared back Madison’s language and the First Amendment was ratified by the states in 1791 as the slightly less specific: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Not abridging the freedom of the press allows news organizations to convey information to a wide audience in a form – be it print or recording – that is a permanent record of the evil to which some men in public office sink.
If the media wasn’t able to do so freely, the actions of the powerful and famous, specifically elected and appointed officials, we-the-people would not have the wherewithal to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
As we’ve seen in recent years, the Supreme Court is far too well insulated against “redress of grievances” and, as a result, it has become a conservative anchor dragging against progressive evolution of our country.
Seven years after ratification of the First Amendment, the ruling Federalist Party – not to be confused with the Society – tried to reinforce its fervor for a strong centralized government pushed through the Sedition Act which deemed criticism of Congress or the president a crime.
But when Thomas Jefferson, who opposed government curtailment of press freedom, was elected president in 1800, his inaugural address reiterated the American government’s commitment to freedom of speech and of the press: "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Numerous attacks on the Sullivan ruling in recent years by Clarence Thomas range from calling it flawed to opining that the ruling and the then “Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”
Methinks the man doth protest too much.
Is it because he is guilty as charged and running scared? He ought to be.
Is the writing and release of this opinion piece contributing to the Judge’s persecution?
His conservative (and Federalist Society) buddy Neil Gorsuch would also like to revisit the Sullivan ruling, because it “has come to leave far more people without redress than anyone could have predicted” – those people being the six Federalist Society Supreme Court justices.
Let’s hope that the time has come to sweep these Federalist fogies off the highest bench in the land. May they fall far and land hard, and face the consequences of their judicial misconduct as documented by our free American press.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
