Meadmaker wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2024 5:42 pm
President Bush wrote: ↑Sat May 25, 2024 2:13 pm
I kind of doubt Justice Thomas would appreciate somebody claiming he said that. On the other hand, maybe he'd like being the subject of a story for children.
I think he would be more offended about being informed that he criticized the landmark ruling that got him his job.
Brown vs Board of Education got Justice Thomas his job? What a bizarre thing to say and even more so to suggest that's how Thomas would regard things. As a judge he has attacked the idea of affirmative action over and over, assuming that's what you're referring to.
But rather than make fun of you, Meadmaker, I'll try to cobble a few things together.
The Supreme Court voted unanimously in
Brown vs Board of Education that segregated schools deprived black schoolchildren of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the 14th Amendment though they couldn't conclusively decide whether the framers of the 14th Amendment had intended to ban racially segregated schools.
Instead their ruling was centered on the importance of education to success in life, saying that to separate elementary and secondary pupils “from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."
Judge Clarence Thomas has had a history of saying that this basis for the
Brown ruling lacked a fundamental rooting in constitutional law. By ruling on the basis that they did in
Brown rather than on a basis fundamentally grounded in the Constitution the Court overly expanded its power says he.
Jumping ahead to now, to his concurring opinion to the majority in
Alexander v. South Carolina State Conference of the NAACP, Justice Thomas returns to the same theme. I'll go through the controversial parts (for most people at least) a little at a time:
The view of equity required to justify a judicial map-drawing power emerged only in the 1950s. The Court’s “impatience with the pace of desegregation” caused by resistance to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), “led us to approve . . . extraordinary remedial measures,”
"Equity" is legal language for solutions courts can provide when addressing constitutional weaknesses or problems.
In the follow-on case to Brown, the Court considered “the manner in which relief [was] to be accorded” for vindication of “the fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional.” Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 298 (1955) (Brown II). In doing so, the Court took a boundless view of equitable remedies.
In other words, the Court greatly expanded its power in not ruling narrowly on a basis fundamentally grounded in the Constitution.
... describing equity as being “characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs.” That understanding may have justified temporary measures to “overcome the widespread resistance to the dictates of the Constitution” prevalent at that time, but, as a general matter, “[s]uch extravagant uses of judicial power are at odds with the history and tradition of the equity power and the Framers’ design.”
Justice Thomas is, again, saying he thinks the Court overstepped its constitutional bounds. Tried to have fun with that by saying:
"Far as I can tell Justice Thomas is saying that courts ruling racial segregation to be unconstitutional... is unconstitutional."