Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts in ‘Tough Spot’

Commentary:

Dear Chief Justice Roberts:

What are you going to do about Clarence Thomas?

Justice is blind. The statue, anyway. Most judges try to blind themselves to extraneous factors like a litigant’s political influence or ideology, as I’m sure you do. Our judicial system depends on folks feeling some level of trust in it.

One basic step (what lawyers call “a necessary but not sufficient condition”) is that judges recuse themselves from hearing cases involving friends and family, or companies they own stock in – or where there’s even the appearance of impropriety. (For example, after two dogs attacked a beloved local artist, the first two municipal judges assigned to the case recused themselves because they knew her.) Many judges curtail their social lives, particularly as regards lawyers who appear in their courtrooms.

Justice Breyer has routinely recused himself from cases involving his brother, a federal judge. Ketanji Brown Jackson says she’ll recuse herself from a case involving Harvard and affirmative action, although they don’t involve her, her family, or her business. (She’s on Harvard’s board.)

Donald Trump and his pals have tried like the devil to overturn a federal election. To veto the choice of the people (and even the electoral college) because they’re bad losers. Something we never saw Tilden or Hoover or Nixon do. It borders on treason, frankly; and Ginny Thomas was right in the middle of it, texting Trump’s cronies, egging them on.

Take the recent case on whether or not documents from January 6 have to be turned over. You and seven other justices, three appointed by Trump, thought it open-and-shut, with no reasonable legal excuse for withholding the documents. Only Justice Thomas didn’t see it that way. Only Thomas, whose wife’s communications might be among those documents,thought they should be kept hidden.

If Thomas’ wife was dealing drugs, and he insisted on presiding over a drug trial related to her, or if she was running a child-prostitution ring out of a pizza joint, and got charged with a crime, no one would countenance it.

This is actually worse! Ginny Thomas has been trying to undermine our democracy by negating our Presidential Election. Still, “Justice” Thomas won’t sit it out.

Ginny Thomas is entitled to the same presumption of innocence we all are. Maybe she didn’t commit or conspire to commit treason or election-law violations. But how will the country ever know, if her husband gets to decide whether the evidence can even be looked at?

This is your watch, Chief. I know that you value the honor and credibility of the U.S. Supreme Court. You’re aware that history will likely recall this period as the Roberts Court. Just as the “Warren Court” outlawed segregated schools by overruling Plessy v Ferguson, recognized the procedural rights of folks accused of crimes but presumed innocent, and decided Roe v. Wade; and the “Burger Court” drew back from some civil rights, limiting or tossing various rights of poor folks.

Will you have folks sneer when they refer to the Roberts Court, on which such Thomas travesties continued, with other justices too timid to speak up?

You’re in a tough spot. Thomas should be impeached; but, in Trump’s words, Thomas could walk down Pennsylvania Avenue murdering people and not be convicted. (Some will accept any misconduct because Thomas votes as they would wish.)

But hadn’t you better try? Something? Some last-ditch effort to save the Court? And your legacy?