RandomGuy
03-01-2016, 04:48 PM
Clarence Thomas did something for the first time in 10 years...
He asked a question out loud during arguments.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-speaks
or 10 years, Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a single substantive question during Supreme Court oral arguments, and has barely uttered a word from the bench. But on Monday, the reticent justice made Supreme Court history by unexpectedly asking a question for the first time in a decade.
Thomas spoke up to ask a constitutional question during the sparsely attended argument for Voisine v. United States, a case focused on gun rights in a domestic-violence conviction, as Justice Department counsel Ilana Eisenstein was in the middle of a statement.
“Ms. Eisenstein, one question,” Thomas said suddenly, eliciting gasps from observers, according to the Associated Press. “Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor suspends a constitutional right?” As he continued in a back and forth with Eisenstein over whether misdemeanor violations superseded Second Amendment rights “at least for now,” the legal world lost its mind over the fact that he not only said something, but, as law blog Above the Law put it, “Thomas didn’t just speak, he snarked. TALK ABOUT A SHOW.”
The last time Thomas said anything at all during oral arguments was on January 14, 2013, when he interrupted Justice Antonin Scalia to crack a joke about how a Yale Law degree was possibly a sign of incompetence, before lapsing back into silence. (Thomas, who was admitted to Yale Law School as an affirmative action student and subsequently experienced difficultly getting jobs because of that status, has publicly loathed Yale ever since.) But that joke took Thomas seven years to make: his last substantial question from the bench came on February 22, 2006, during a death-penalty case. Whether the recent death of Scalia, the arch-conservative justice who previously sat next to Thomas, had anything to do with his decision to speak, remains unknown.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-speaks
Yes, you got that right. The guy has sat on SCOTUS for 10 years without asking a single freaking question of the lawyers in front of him.
I guess they must have found a brain donor for him after Scalia croaked...
He asked a question out loud during arguments.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-speaks
or 10 years, Justice Clarence Thomas has not asked a single substantive question during Supreme Court oral arguments, and has barely uttered a word from the bench. But on Monday, the reticent justice made Supreme Court history by unexpectedly asking a question for the first time in a decade.
Thomas spoke up to ask a constitutional question during the sparsely attended argument for Voisine v. United States, a case focused on gun rights in a domestic-violence conviction, as Justice Department counsel Ilana Eisenstein was in the middle of a statement.
“Ms. Eisenstein, one question,” Thomas said suddenly, eliciting gasps from observers, according to the Associated Press. “Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor suspends a constitutional right?” As he continued in a back and forth with Eisenstein over whether misdemeanor violations superseded Second Amendment rights “at least for now,” the legal world lost its mind over the fact that he not only said something, but, as law blog Above the Law put it, “Thomas didn’t just speak, he snarked. TALK ABOUT A SHOW.”
The last time Thomas said anything at all during oral arguments was on January 14, 2013, when he interrupted Justice Antonin Scalia to crack a joke about how a Yale Law degree was possibly a sign of incompetence, before lapsing back into silence. (Thomas, who was admitted to Yale Law School as an affirmative action student and subsequently experienced difficultly getting jobs because of that status, has publicly loathed Yale ever since.) But that joke took Thomas seven years to make: his last substantial question from the bench came on February 22, 2006, during a death-penalty case. Whether the recent death of Scalia, the arch-conservative justice who previously sat next to Thomas, had anything to do with his decision to speak, remains unknown.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/supreme-court-clarence-thomas-speaks
Yes, you got that right. The guy has sat on SCOTUS for 10 years without asking a single freaking question of the lawyers in front of him.
I guess they must have found a brain donor for him after Scalia croaked...