AAQ: Not at all. In fact, his fierce opposition to affirmative action is rooted in exactly the point you made…that once someone is tagged as having been the recipient of a some sort of racial prioritization early in his/her career they will be permanently judged on that basis.
In Thomas’ case, he was a competent lawyer in both his Missouri role in the AG’s office and OK during his tenure as Danforth’s LA but certainly not viewed by anyone as a rising star in the legal community. I know we will just disagree about his tenure on the Court given how difficult it has become to abstract his extreme conservative views from legal scholarship.
Whats most interesting is that he literally “found his voice” with Covid when the Court went to virtual arguments. He has asked more questions in the past 2 terms than in the prior 20 years.
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