NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
In the 68 hours of oral arguments that have taken place during the Supreme Court's current session, Clarence Thomas has not uttered a single word according to Court transcripts. Since transcripts began attributing comments to specific Justices in 2004, Thomas has spoken a grand total of 281 words. In that same timespan, Antonin Scalia and Steven Breyer have hammered attorneys with 30,000 and 35,000 words of questions, respectively.
35,000 to 281. That is, in case you do not feel like doing the math, a ratio of 125:1.
Anyone else wonder if Clarence's often-praised "pensiveness" and Silent Bob-esque reputation for saying little but making it count (like his extraordinarily brief dissent in Lawrence v Texas) is actually….well, stupidity?
May 22nd, 2007 at 11:17 am
I wonder if Clarence forgot to do his homework and wrote that opinion on his way into the Supreme Court that morning.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:53 pm
He basically paraphrases Stewart's quite famous opinion in Griswold, which I teach in Y103. So Clarence is showcasing the fact that he knows as much as an IU freshman.
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:26 am
as far as I can tell, he's gone from "… who put this pubic hair on my Coke can!…" to dead silence.
really, can he actually be expected to trump that magnum opus?
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
15 years later, and we're still giggling about pubes and Long Dong Silver.
May 31st, 2007 at 3:25 am
Hey he's a supreme court justice, there's no way he's dumb. Evil, yes, but dumb, hell no.