Judging Freedom - Clarence Thomas Comments

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Clarence Thomas Comments on the state of SCOTUS and other American institutions. #SupremeCourtSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 16, 2022. It's about 1.15 in the afternoon. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made some interesting and candid comments over the weekend at a conference in Dallas in which he was speaking directly about the influence on the court with respect to the leak of Justice Sam Alito's opinion. To refresh your memory, the court heard oral argument in the Dobbs case, that's the Mississippi case they challenged as Roe v. Wade back in December. The court apparently voted five to three to one or five to four, I'm not sure, to reverse Roe versus Wade. And Justice Alito in the majority

was assigned the task of drafting the opinion, reversing it. And somebody inside the court pilfered that opinion and released it. Now it's not the final opinion. It's a draft opinion. It's terribly unfair to Justice Alito and to the members of the court, because whatever opinion is ultimately released, if it's different by so much as one iota from the draft opinion, people will speculate forever, why this change, why this change? Can the court be bullied? Well, Justice Thomas said, one of our viewers has sent me this quote, we can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcome you want. The events of earlier this week, he said it last week, are symptoms of that. But he had a darker warning as well. Here's what he said.

I think we are in danger of destroying the institutions that are required for a free society. You can't have a civil society, a free society, without a stable legal system. Look where we are, where now that trust or that belief is gone forever. And when you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I'm in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It's like kind of an infidelity that you can explain it, but you can't undo it. And I think you're seeing it go through any number of our institutions. An infidelity that you can explain but can't undo. You know, you have all heard my fears about this, and it was embarrassment to the court. I just articulated them. If the final opinion is different from the original draft, and final opinions are almost always different from original drafts. I mean, the final opinion has the input of five people. The original draft has the input of just

one. But it's beyond that, according to Justice Thomas. It goes to fidelity. It goes to into whose eyes are you looking? Is this the leaker or does the leaker work for this person? Is the infidelity from the left? Was this leaked by somebody who did not like Roe versus Wade and maybe wants to shake loose one of the five members of the majority, the least confident of the five in the position of reversal? Was the leaker on the right who knows that perhaps one of the five is a little shaky on this position and they want to embarrass that person into staying there or shore up that person to prevent them from making this public change? We don't know. But damn, if that word infidelity doesn't sting, who knows how long the taint and the stain caused by this leak will remain with the Supreme Court.

We don't know. I'd be surprised if it changes the outcome. And like everybody else, I'm waiting to see who the culprit is. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.