Prepare the world’s tiniest violin, my friends. At a recent Catholic University Law School event, while sharing his thoughts on life, the universe, and everything with his former clerk Jenn Mascott (currently nominated to the Third Circuit despite a complete lack of connections to the state of Delaware), Justice Clarence Thomas explained that he put the brakes on his George Washington Law teaching gig after Dobbs because of “unpleasantness.”
Oh no! The horror. Unpleasantness, you say?
What an absolute snowflake.
He didn’t want to keep teaching a class… where he had all the power, controlled the syllabus, the grading, and the air conditioning. A class populated by students who, almost certainly, skewed mostly his way (who else is taking a Thomas class?). Come on, man! I know you prefer hanging out with fawning admirers willing to pay for your luxury vacations, but if you’re going to do this job, you’ve got to be able to handle a couple side-eyes in a seminar room.
You know what’s unpleasant? People having forced births because a witchhunter from the 1600s said so. It’s the same thing with Amy Coney Barrett’s recent lament that her family forced her to make some coherent legal justification for her superlegislature cosplay to overturn longstanding Constitutional rights. Sorry gang, you don’t get to run away because someone points out that your “deeply rooted in history and tradition” arguments are about as historical as the History Channel. And even Ancient Aliens is better sourced than these Second Amendment opinions.
Honestly, the Ancient Aliens comparison is more apropos than it might seem at first blush. You know how every episode involves the same rotating panel of talking heads whether they’re explaining how Egyptians and Mesoamericans couldn’t possibly have independently come up with the idea for a pyramid despite being the most intuitive design imaginable or how angels look like astronauts? That’s because the conspiracy theory world is a big circle jerk of pseudo-academics. Now, for a fun experiment, check out the “history” the conservative legal movement cites in their opinions. Notice how it’s mostly secondary law review articles published by former clerks turned academics slapping together shoddy, cherry-picked research to paper up the thesis that the Fourteenth Amendment was a scrivener’s error? Idea laundering in action, all to prevent the judges from having to stand behind the history directly… it’s been vetted (by 3L law review editors, anyway)!
But that’s the thing. These people are just too chickenshit to stand behind their principles in the face of vague disdain. During the civil rights era, judges faced actual terroristic threats — the Chief Justice highlighted this in his annual report, before comparing those threats to being criticized by law bloggers — but stood by their decisions. That’s not where this movement is. They’ve got two modes: shocked pearl-clutching that anyone would be so impolitic to question their delicate genius and active troll. And both flavors rest on the cloistered, unaccountable perch they’ve fashioned for themselves to enact policy from the bench well beyond anything imagined by the Framers. The throughline of the conservative legal movement is taking reckless, unaccountable fiat and equating it with jurisprudential bravery.
If it’s unpleasant to hear a few students question your historical fan fiction, maybe don’t reshape the lives of millions based on it.
Earlier: Clarence Thomas Quits Law School Class, Depriving Students Of BOTH Sides Of The ‘Do Gay People Have Human Rights?’ Debate
Amy Coney Barrett’s Fetish For Phony Reluctance
Chief Justice John Roberts Thinks You’re Stupid And He’s Probably Right
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
The post Justice That Said Abortion Is Unconstitutional Fails To Carry Semester To Term appeared first on Above the Law.
Prepare the world’s tiniest violin, my friends. At a recent Catholic University Law School event, while sharing his thoughts on life, the universe, and everything with his former clerk Jenn Mascott (currently nominated to the Third Circuit despite a complete lack of connections to the state of Delaware), Justice Clarence Thomas explained that he put the brakes on his George Washington Law teaching gig after Dobbs because of “unpleasantness.”
Oh no! The horror. Unpleasantness, you say?
What an absolute snowflake.
He didn’t want to keep teaching a class… where he had all the power, controlled the syllabus, the grading, and the air conditioning. A class populated by students who, almost certainly, skewed mostly his way (who else is taking a Thomas class?). Come on, man! I know you prefer hanging out with fawning admirers willing to pay for your luxury vacations, but if you’re going to do this job, you’ve got to be able to handle a couple side-eyes in a seminar room.
You know what’s unpleasant? People having forced births because a witchhunter from the 1600s said so. It’s the same thing with Amy Coney Barrett’s recent lament that her family forced her to make some coherent legal justification for her superlegislature cosplay to overturn longstanding Constitutional rights. Sorry gang, you don’t get to run away because someone points out that your “deeply rooted in history and tradition” arguments are about as historical as the History Channel. And even Ancient Aliens is better sourced than these Second Amendment opinions.
Honestly, the Ancient Aliens comparison is more apropos than it might seem at first blush. You know how every episode involves the same rotating panel of talking heads whether they’re explaining how Egyptians and Mesoamericans couldn’t possibly have independently come up with the idea for a pyramid despite being the most intuitive design imaginable or how angels look like astronauts? That’s because the conspiracy theory world is a big circle jerk of pseudo-academics. Now, for a fun experiment, check out the “history” the conservative legal movement cites in their opinions. Notice how it’s mostly secondary law review articles published by former clerks turned academics slapping together shoddy, cherry-picked research to paper up the thesis that the Fourteenth Amendment was a scrivener’s error? Idea laundering in action, all to prevent the judges from having to stand behind the history directly… it’s been vetted (by 3L law review editors, anyway)!
But that’s the thing. These people are just too chickenshit to stand behind their principles in the face of vague disdain. During the civil rights era, judges faced actual terroristic threats — the Chief Justice highlighted this in his annual report, before comparing those threats to being criticized by law bloggers — but stood by their decisions. That’s not where this movement is. They’ve got two modes: shocked pearl-clutching that anyone would be so impolitic to question their delicate genius and active troll. And both flavors rest on the cloistered, unaccountable perch they’ve fashioned for themselves to enact policy from the bench well beyond anything imagined by the Framers. The throughline of the conservative legal movement is taking reckless, unaccountable fiat and equating it with jurisprudential bravery.
If it’s unpleasant to hear a few students question your historical fan fiction, maybe don’t reshape the lives of millions based on it.
Earlier: Clarence Thomas Quits Law School Class, Depriving Students Of BOTH Sides Of The ‘Do Gay People Have Human Rights?’ Debate
Amy Coney Barrett’s Fetish For Phony Reluctance
Chief Justice John Roberts Thinks You’re Stupid And He’s Probably Right
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
