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Justice Thomas Reflects on Path to the Supreme Court
Speaking in Atlanta, justice discusses early job hunt and how race and expectations affect perceptions of his Court opinions
Fulton County Daily Report
October 19, 2007
Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken often about the difficulties he says he experienced in seeking a job in Atlanta following his graduation from Yale Law School in 1974. Speaking in Atlanta on Thursday, Thomas again said he was never offered a job in that city but acknowledged that fate has a funny way of opening one door when it closes another.
"My grandfather had always said that you have to play the hand that you're dealt," the justice told a packed Atlanta Press Club luncheon at the Commerce Club. "Had I not been rejected in Atlanta, I certainly wouldn't be standing up here today talking to you all. I'd probably be safely in a law firm someplace doing tax work."
When he didn't get a job in Atlanta, Thomas took a job with the then-attorney general of Missouri, John Danforth. As recounted in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son" -- which Thomas was in Atlanta on Thursday to promote -- Danforth would remain a key supporter of Thomas through his controversial Supreme Court confirmation proceedings in 1991.
According to a 2004 Thomas biography by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ken Foskett, who introduced the justice at Monday's luncheon, the firm that's now Kilpatrick Stockton ultimately came through with an offer of an associate position for Thomas but not until after Thomas had agreed to work for Danforth.
But in his autobiography, Thomas refers only to an Atlanta firm that "started to blow hot and cold." He wrote that when the firm hired one of his classmates, he called the firm and said he was no longer interested.
He continued to dwell on that job search in his address Monday, calling it a "time of dashed hopes and expectations." Pressed during the question and answer session, Thomas noted that R. Lawrence Ashe Jr. -- a Kilpatrick lawyer at the time -- worked on his behalf, but said "I don't think I ever got a job offer."
Making a joke that only underscored the sensitivity of the rejection, Thomas said, "I don't want to say anything negative, or they'll ask me to recuse."
Thomas makes clear in his book that the take-away from the Atlanta job search was that a Yale law degree meant one thing for white graduates and another for black graduates. And on Monday, the issue of race also infused his comments on how his performance on the Court has been received.
NOT 'GOSPEL'
According to Thomas, the justices on the Court know that they don't have the "gospel," just their opinions. "That's why it's called an opinion," he said.
"Unfortunately, particularly the case for those of us who happen to be considered minorities ... others seem to know what the gospel is for us, to know how we should come out in particular cases because of the pigment of our skin. That harkens back so often to the way things were done back in Savannah," he continued. "I think that is unfortunate, but there is no gospel. There are simply opinions."
He said that when he first joined the Court, "those who were insistent on discrediting" him suggested erroneously that he was following Justice Antonin Scalia in his decision making ("There was no one more horrified than Justice Scalia").
"Obviously what it's based on is that I'm black and that I'm supposed to think a certain way," said Thomas. "and ... there's no way, since I'm not supposed to think that way, that I could up with that myself, so I must be following somebody."
Thomas recalled something the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said to him shortly after Thomas joined the court in 1991. "‘In your first five years, you wonder how you got here,'" he recalled the then-chief justice telling him. "‘After that you wonder how your colleagues got here.'"
That story came in response to a question about what he thought about justices retiring only when their health demanded it. Thomas said he didn't know if that was "an argument worth having."
He recalled noting the advancing age of the late Justice Harry A. Blackmun when Thomas joined the Court. Blackmun, who was 85 when he left the Court in 1994, proved wrong any such skepticism Thomas may have had, Thomas recalled. "At the end of the term, I was dragging," Thomas remembered, "and he was cruising along."
ANITA HILL
The name of Anita Hill, who famously testified during Thomas' confirmation hearings that he had sexually harassed her when both were at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, came up only once during Thomas' luncheon remarks, when a questioner asked why he addressed that matter in his book.
"If I left it out, you'd be asking me the opposite," Thomas replied, before quickly moving to the next question.
But in the stack of index cards on which attendees posed questions for Thomas were questions touching on women's rights issues that tiptoed around the controversy at the heart of Thomas' confirmation battle. Thomas was asked about whether the country is ready for a black or woman president (yes, Thomas answered), pay inequity for women (he said he hadn't followed the statistics suggested in the question), and professionals who fear reporting sexual harassment.
When the question arose of whether the nation was likely to see a female chief justice on its highest court anytime soon, Thomas noted that Georgia has a black woman, Leah Ward Sears, as chief justice of its highest court. Thomas, who spoke at Sears' swearing-in as chief justice in 2005, turned that inquiry around with a rhetorical question of his own: "Did you ever think you would live that long?"
