12 October 2007
Really Resentful Clarence Thomas
I’ll always believe that Justice Clarence Thomas has an enormous chip on his shoulder. It may be well justified, but it doesn’t as a result make for good law.
His characterization of the school voucher debate as a struggle between “the cognoscenti” and poor urban families illustrates the distortion that Justice Thomas’s attitude introduces into his legal judgment. In the end, the most active and well-financed opponents of school vouchers are teachers unions that do not have the same clout in private or charter schools as in public systems. Surely people raised in economically disadvantaged circumstances can become good teachers without being know-it-alls.
In his defense of Justice Thomas in the October 9, 2007, Wall Street Journal, John Yoo draws a frightening and incongruous conclusion – that the imperfections of our society can be resolved by the Supreme Court. Isn’t that what conservatives resent about the “liberal” Warren Court? When government meets its limits on resolving society’s imperfections it is up to citizens to make government work better, not to rely on interpreters of the law to lead us back to the glorious past of the framers’ original intent.
I’ll always believe that Justice Clarence Thomas has an enormous chip on his shoulder. It may be well justified, but it doesn’t as a result make for good law.
His characterization of the school voucher debate as a struggle between “the cognoscenti” and poor urban families illustrates the distortion that Justice Thomas’s attitude introduces into his legal judgment. In the end, the most active and well-financed opponents of school vouchers are teachers unions that do not have the same clout in private or charter schools as in public systems. Surely people raised in economically disadvantaged circumstances can become good teachers without being know-it-alls.
In his defense of Justice Thomas in the October 9, 2007, Wall Street Journal, John Yoo draws a frightening and incongruous conclusion – that the imperfections of our society can be resolved by the Supreme Court. Isn’t that what conservatives resent about the “liberal” Warren Court? When government meets its limits on resolving society’s imperfections it is up to citizens to make government work better, not to rely on interpreters of the law to lead us back to the glorious past of the framers’ original intent.
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