SCOTUS Retirements and the Ages of Justices

Many posts have discussed the judiciary.

There are rumors that Justice Alito might retire soon.

Bruce Mehlman:

Supreme Court vacancies occur when Justices choose to retire or die in office. They cannot be fired by the President. So far none of the sitting Justices have indicated a desire to depart, and all are well-below the average age of departing modern Justices (79.3 since 1970). On May 7, 2026, Clarence Thomas — the oldest current Justice at 77 — will become the second-longest serving in Court history (12,614 days), with only 745 more days needed to exceed William O. Douglas’ record for longest. The President may not be the only one with eyes on the history books.

 

Thomas, Clerks, and Networks

 Abbie VanSickle and Steve Eder at NYT:

In the 32 years since Justice Thomas came through the fire of his confirmation hearings and onto the Supreme Court, he has assembled an army of influential acolytes unlike any other — a network of like-minded former clerks who have not only rallied to his defense but carried his idiosyncratic brand of conservative legal thinking out into the nation’s law schools, top law firms, the judiciary and the highest reaches of government.

The former clerks’ public defense of the justice was “unparalleled in the history of the court,” said Todd C. Peppers, a professor of public affairs at Roanoke College and the author of “Courtiers of the Marble Palace: The Rise and Influence of the Supreme Court Law Clerk.” “It’s frankly astonishing.”

For Justice Thomas, the letter came at a time of both trial and triumph. He had become the face of long-simmering questions about the high court’s ethical guidelines. But he was also at the height of his influence. The court’s senior justice, he had spent years on the losing side of cases, writing minority opinions grounded in his strict originalist interpretations of the Constitution. Now that former President Donald J. Trump had given the court a conservative supermajority, Justice Thomas was a guiding voice for a new judicial mainstream.

He was playing a long game, and his former clerks were among its most important players.

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Now the tides have turned, and at least 18 of those former clerks have served as state, federal or military judges, nearly three-quarters of them appointed by Mr. Trump to federal courts, where they have ruled on issues like voting rights and access to the abortion pill. Roughly 10 more served in Mr. Trump’s administration; nearly a dozen made his Supreme Court short lists. Former Thomas clerks have argued, and won, several of the most momentous Supreme Court cases of recent years.

The network also includes a number of “adopted clerks” who never worked for Justice Thomas but are invited to events and receive clerk communications. Among them are high-profile conservatives including Leonard Leo, the judicial kingmaker of the Federalist Society, Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Alex Azar, a Trump cabinet secretary.

SCOTUS Ethics

 

 Jamie Gangel, Elizabeth Stuart and Tierney Sneed at CNN:

In a carefully worded, but blunt statement, conservative former federal judge J. Michael Luttig sent a warning shot to the Supreme Court, calling on the Court to enact a code of conduct that would “subject itself to the highest professional and ethical standards that would render the Court beyond reproach.”

If the Supreme Court does not take such action, he cautioned, Congress has “the power under the Constitution” to prescribe ethical standards of conduct for the court.

The statement is part of written testimony Luttig – a former judge on the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals – has submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee holding hearings Tuesday and follows weeks of ethical controversies involving the Supreme Court. Luttig’s public admonition is especially notable because of his conservative credentials and his longstanding, close ties with the Supreme Court.

 Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow.

The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica.

“Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial information through his work as an administrator.

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Last month, ProPublica reported that Thomas accepted luxury travel from Crow virtually every year for decades, including international superyacht cruises and private jet flights around the world. Crow also paid money to Thomas and his relatives in an undisclosed real estate deal, ProPublica found. After he purchased the house where Thomas’ mother lives, Crow poured tens of thousands of dollars into improving the property. And roughly 15 years ago, Crow donated much of the budget of a political group founded by Thomas’ wife, which paid her a $120,000 salary.

Gifts and Clarence Thomas

Ivana Saric at Axios:

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas acknowledged allegations that he had failed to properly disclose luxury trips he had received from an influential GOP donor, saying in a statement Friday that he has "always sought to comply with the disclosure guidelines."

Driving the news: An explosive ProPublica investigation alleged that over the span over more than two decades Thomas accepted lavish vacations paid for by a major Republican donor virtually every year.

• Ethics law experts told the publication that Thomas had likely violated disclosure rules that require him to report travel on Dallas real estate magnate Harlan Crow's private jet and yacht, and possibly even his stays at Crow's resort in the Adirondacks
• In a statement to ProPublica, Crow argued that he and his wife's "hospitality" towards Thomas and his wife was no different from the hospitality they showed other friends, and that they had never tried to influence Thomas on "any legal or political issue."

State of play: Thomas echoed this sentiment in his own statement, saying the two couples had been friends for 25 years and "as friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips."

• Thomas noted that he believed he'd done nothing wrong based on guidance he received "early in my tenure."
• He said he was told that "this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable."
• "These guidelines are now being changed, as the committee of the Judicial Conference responsible for financial disclosure for the entire federal judiciary just this past month announced new guidance. And, it is, of course, my intent to follow this guidance in the future," Thomas said.

The big picture: Last month the Judicial Conference of the United States adopted tighter financial disclosure rules for federal judges and U.S. Supreme Court justices, including requiring them to report when they are gifted stays at commercial properties and travel on private jets, per the Washington Post.

Clarence Thomas

Sam Baker at Axios:

The big picture: Thomas has spent years essentially laying out a whole parallel understanding of the law. He’s one of the court’s most prolific authors of solo dissents, according to Adam Feldman of Empirical SCOTUS, and has also written a slew of solo concurrences similar to last week's.Thomas doesn't just write a dissent here and an additional point about a majority holding there, but rather has created a whole ecosystem of opinions that build on and reference each other almost in the same way as the court’s actual precedents, except for the fact that they are all one man speaking only for himself.

Thomas’ solo opinion in last week’s abortion case cited 11 of his past opinions, 10 of which were solo opinions. It drew more heavily from the Clarence Thomas Cinematic Universe than from the rest of the court’s historical precedents, dissents and non-Thomas concurrences.

But as the makeup of the court has shifted around him, Thomas’ views have gotten more influential. And that influence will only grow.“There’s this whole array of concurring and dissenting opinions that are now available for the majority on the court to take more seriously,” said Ralph Rossum, a professor at Claremont McKenna College who wrote a book about Thomas.

Thomas has been able to “plow the field and plant the seeds” that other justices would later “harvest” for their own majority opinions, even if they didn’t join Thomas at the outset, Rossum said. “You see that coming to fruition again on abortion,” Rossum said.

Details: The Supreme Court has protected rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, same-sex intercourse and contraception under the same legal doctrine, known as “substantive due process.”Thomas rejects that entire theory, and so he would throw out every ruling that relies on it.

“That's classic Thomas. There isn't a justice on the court less committed to reliance on precedent than Thomas,” Rossum said. He said Thomas believes the court spends too much time interpreting its own work and too little time on the Constitution.

Natural Rights and SCOTUS

Aaron Blake at WP:

In questions for the record released after her confirmation hearings, [Judge Katanji Brown]  Jackson declined to take a position on whether people have so-called “natural rights.”

Here’s the Q&A with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.):

Q: Do you hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights, yes or no?
JACKSON: I do not hold a position on whether individuals possess natural rights.

Some conservative legal pundits highlighted the answer Friday, with the National Review writing that Jackson “doesn’t embrace the basic American creed set forth in that passage from the Declaration” of Independence. Cruz followed that up by calling it “stunning.” The conservative group FreedomWorks on Monday called the answer “unreal.” And Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) on Monday cited the answer as part of his rationale for voting against Jackson at a hearing Monday.

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The last time this concept took the main stage in Supreme Court confirmations was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it came up in the hearings of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. And the two Republican nominees actually took opposing views on it.

Bork argued for a strict adherence to the text of the Constitution — an original-intent judicial philosophy that made no space for the concept of natural rights, or at least for their role in jurisprudence. Specifically, Bork rejected the idea that the Ninth Amendment (that “enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”) conferred a right to privacy — which the court used to grant the right to an abortion in Roe v. Wade. In a 1990 book after his nomination was defeated, Bork linked the natural-rights approach to a dangerous “impulse to judicial authoritarianism.”

Thomas, though, had spoken extensively about the role of natural rights in the law before his 1991 confirmation hearings. In a 1987 speech, he praised an article that said a fetus had an inalienable right to life guaranteed by the law of God in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas called it a “splendid example of applying natural law.”

The divergent approaches were spotlighted by none other than a senator by the name of Joe Biden, who was then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a lengthy Washington Post op-ed on the topic, Biden wrote:

No issue divided Judge Bork and me as much as this single question: Are there fundamental rights — not explicit in the Constitution — that are protected by that document? My answer to that question, relying on principles of natural law, was an emphatic “yes” — a view that Judge Thomas, who has sharply criticized Judge Bork’s original-intent jurisprudence, appears to share.

SEE JUSTICE KAGAN'S CONFIRMATION HEARING

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Justice Thomas on Federalism and the Inconsistencies of Marijuana Law

 Cite as: 594 U. S. ____ (2021) 1 Statement of THOMAS, J. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES STANDING AKIMBO, LLC, ET AL., v. UNITED STATES ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT No. 20–645. Decided June 28, 2021

Sixteen years ago, this Court held that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce authorized it “to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana.” Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U. S. 1, 5 (2005). The reason, the Court explained, was that Congress had “enacted comprehensive legislation to regulate the interstate market in a fungible commodity” and that “exemption[s]” for local use could undermine this “comprehensive” regime. Id., at 22–29. The Court stressed that Congress had decided “to prohibit entirely the possession or use of [marijuana]” and had “designate[d] marijuana as contraband for any purpose.” Id., at 24–27 (first emphasis added). Prohibiting any intrastate use was thus, according to the Court, “‘necessary and proper’” to avoid a “gaping hole” in Congress’ “closed regulatory system.” Id., at 13, 22 (citing U. S. Const., Art. I, §8).

Whatever the merits of Raich when it was decided, federal policies of the past 16 years have greatly undermined its reasoning. Once comprehensive, the Federal Government’s current approach is a half-in, half-out regime that simultaneously tolerates and forbids local use of marijuana. This contradictory and unstable state of affairs strains basic principles of federalism and conceals traps for the unwary

Thomas notes that the federal government outlaws marijuana even though 36 states have legalized it for medical use and 18 allow recreational use.

Yet, as petitioners recently discovered, legality understate law and the absence of federal criminal enforcement do not ensure equal treatment. At issue here is a provision of the Tax Code that allows most businesses to calculate their taxable income by subtracting from their gross revenue the cost of goods sold and other ordinary and necessary business expenses, such as rent and employee salaries. See 26 U. S. C. §162(a); 26 CFR. 1.61–3(a) (2020). But because of a public-policy provision in the Tax Code, companies that deal in controlled substances prohibited by federal law may subtract only the cost of goods sold, not the other ordinary and necessary business expenses. See 26 U. S. C. §280E. Under this rule, a business that is still in the red after it pays its workers and keeps the lights on might nonetheless owe substantial federal income tax. 

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This disjuncture between the Government’s recent laissez-faire policies on marijuana and the actual operation of specific laws is not limited to the tax context. Many marijuana-related businesses operate entirely in cash because federal law prohibits certain financial institutions from knowingly accepting deposits from or providing other bank services to businesses that violate federal law. Black & Galeazzi, Cannabis Banking: Proceed With Caution, American Bar Assn., Feb. 6, 2020. Cash-based operations are understandably enticing to burglars and robbers. But, if marijuana-related businesses, in recognition of this, hire armed guards for protection, the owners and the guards might run afoul of a federal law that imposes harsh penalties for using a firearm in furtherance of a “drug trafficking crime.” 18 U. S. C. §924(c)(1)(A). A marijuana user similarly can find himself a federal felon if he just possesses a firearm. §922(g)(3). Or petitioners and similar businesses may find themselves on the wrong side of a civil suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. See, e.g., Safe Streets Alliance v. Hickenlooper, 859 F. 3d 865, 876– 877 (CA10 2017) (permitting such a suit to proceed).

 

The Declaration, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court

Jeffrey Rosen at WSJ:

Justice Clarence Thomas invoked the Declaration in his dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage. “Since well before 1787,” he wrote, “liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits.” Other conservatives now cite the Declaration to lay the groundwork for a Supreme Court challenge to Roe, which they claim violates the God-given right to life. When Alabama legislators recently passed a law banning abortion, they cited the Declaration, saying that “from conception … all men are created equal” and possess a fundamental right to life.

And just last week, Justice Elena Kagan quoted the Declaration in her dissenting opinion from the Court’s decision that partisan gerrymandering is a question for legislatures rather than for courts. “Is that how American democracy is supposed to work?” she asked, citing the Declaration’s insistence that governments derive “their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”

Whether you are persuaded by Justice Thomas or Justice Kagan, it’s striking that the debate between conservatives and liberals on the Court continues to revolve around how to read the Constitution through the lens of the Declaration. How are we to balance its sometimes conflicting “self-evident” truths? That is the ongoing question of American politics and constitutional discourse.