Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, arguably the bench’s most conservative member, bemoaned the politicization of judges and warned against the highest court becoming “the most dangerous” branch of government during a Thursday speech at the University of Notre Dame. “I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference. So if they think you are antiabortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out,” said the George H. W. Bush–appointed justice, per a Washington Post report. “They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician. That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”
Thomas’s remarks were an apparent response to the backlash that the Supreme Court has faced following its 5-4 vote to refuse to block an antiabortion law passed in Texas this month, which all but repealed the legal precedent set by Roe v. Wade by blocking women from seeking abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. He continued by saying that Americans “should be really, really careful” about “destroying our institutions because they don’t give us what we want, when we want it,” adding, “After you’ve done that, and now what? What’s your next step?”
Thomas, who has previously described Washington, D.C., as a “broken” city, then went after an unnamed group of judges for “venturing into areas [the court] should not have entered into” and partly blamed them for the controversy that now shrouds all judicial nominees being granted lifetime appointments. “The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch, and we may have become the most dangerous,” the longest-serving justice said. “And I think that’s problematic.”
Ironically, Thomas has seemingly engaged in overtly political actions while serving on the bench, including speaking at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, and using the Supreme Court’s facilities to privately meet with Heritage Foundation staff and interns; he has also claimed that Roe v. Wade is “plainly wrong.” His wife, Ginni Thomas, is a staunch conservative activist who, on the morning of January 6, praised the pro-Trump demonstrators, who later became rioters attempting to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral victory by storming the Capitol building.
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