Judging Thomas : The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas

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Summary: A Balanced Biography of a Most Controversial Justice
Review: Any book about the current Supreme Court's most controversial justice is not going to please everybody. Thomas remains radioactive as a topic even after more than a decade on the Court. The author, an investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however has written a fairly balanced biography that neither embraces Thomas nor condemns him. In fact, although the author did not have access to the Justice's private papers and correspondence, he did extensively interact with Thomas in covering the Court and in researching this volume. This is not to say the book is without deficiencies. The most notable problem is that a very limited amount of attention is devoted to Thomas's decisions. Instead, readers are referred by the author to Gerber's First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas for in-depth analysis. The focus here is predominantly biographical and that has strengths and weaknesses in doing a judicial biography. The acid test of any Thomas biography, of course, is the Anita Hill controversy; here the author is somewhat too inclined to stake out an unsatisfying middle position: "Although it was plausible that Thomas said what Hill alleged, it seems implausible that he said it all in the manner Hill described"(at 251). Whatever one's views of Thomas, this book does afford a valuable insight into the forces that shaped him and how he ended up arriving on the Court. It will be interesting to see how Thomas's own forthcoming autobiography addresses the same issues as are covered here.

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Summary: A Dispassionate, Inspirational Biography
Review: Few people are dispassionate about Clarence Thomas, but the author manages to hold passion in abeyance in presenting a well balanced -- and in many ways, inspirational -- review of the Supreme Court Justice's life and times. Love him or loathe him, it's hard for any reader not to come away from this book with enhanced respect for Thomas. . . for his success in overcoming obstacles in Jim Crow southern Georgia; for his equanimity and courage during the Senate confirmation process; and for the personal warmth and compassion that he masks behind a taciturn, often dour public demeanor. The author goes to great lengths to show how the values forged by Thomas's grandfather, Myers Anderson -- self-reliance, industriousness, relentless work ethic, pride, individual charity, skepticism toward government -- have helped to inform the Justice's worldview. The reader does not have to march in lockstep with Thomas's views to admire his Horatio Alger lifestory.



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Summary: I still done know Judge Thomas
Review: I was left wanting more. I felt the book was written to achieve a certain number of pages instead of providing me information about Judge Thomas. The book often provides far to much information about the people passing through his life. I was not interested in reading so much informatin about the people who employ him or the people he met on his life journey.

The book did address some of Judge Thomas early social ideas, but the book seem to be written without much input from Judge Thomas. I did not get the sense that I knew Judge Thomas after I completed the book.

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Summary: A balanced biography of an intriguing man
Review: Several years ago, The Weekly Standard ran a cover story calling Clarence Thomas the most powerful conservative in America. He truly was at that time.

Foskett does a fair job stripping away the controversy and polemic to examine the man, his background, and his life. There is obviously the story of Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, and a fair amount of time is devoted to those few weeks in the Justice's life. Far more interesting than that is his life before Washington, and before the political appointments, while he was still growing up under the stern eye of his grandfather, Myers Anderson.

Without understanding the world that incubated Thomas it is impossible to understand why he could view the world and the American judicial system as he does. To understand Clarence Thomas more fully one must understand Myers Anderson, the dominant force in his early years. Foskett accounts for the apartheid caste system of the Jim Crow south that trapped and warped so many people.

Passionate reactions about Thomas will exist for a long, long time. His ideas stand on their own merit. This book truly gives the reader a glimpse at the humanity of a man who thinks for himself and will set the judicial tenor of the court for years to come.

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Summary: For a different view than the first four I see here
Review: Under the link above "product details" to "see all editorial reviews," see the review by Randall Kennedy for the Washington Post

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Summary: Divine intervention. No doubt about it.
Review: Well-researched and thorough account of the life of Mr. Justice Clarence Thomas. I know it is well-researched because of the details about his wife's life. Ginny Lamp Thomas was a classmate of mine both in undergrad and in law school. The author notes that she transferred to Creighton after her first two years of undergrad and that she took some time off before she graduated from Creighton Law School. Absolutely correct. I'm sure that sleaze merchants Jane Mayer (now "The New Yorker" slanderer-in-chief) and Jill Abrahmson (NYT kingpin and liberal spinmeister) had no such record of accuracy in their "Strange Justice."

The points of divine intervention are at least three:

1. Clarence has dropped out of the seminary and he's walking the streets of his hometown when he runs into a nun who was a former teacher. She learns of his circumstances and helps him into the College of the Holy Cross.

2. He doesn't get the job offer he wants from a big Atlanta law firm and ends up taking a job at the Attorney General's office in Missouri. Actually the big firm makes him an offer later, but he had given his word to the Attorney General and he keeps it. The AG is John Danforth who later becomes a United States Senator and is pivotal in getting him through the confirmation process.

3. Meeting Ginny Lamp. Pure happenstance. I also know Ginny had other prior offers of marriage but she was unmarried at the time she met Clarence Thomas. Ginny has a pure and kind heart and was critical in getting him through his trial.

Clarence Thomas is such a good guy. The libs hate him because he is a black conservative. His life experience is such that he thinks the best way to help the black race is not through liberalism but through conservative political principles. And given the results of liberalism who can argue with his method?

He's not against blacks as some libs say. He's for advancing blacks but through a method and political means that liberals disagree with. And for that they put him through the single most SHAMEFUL AND DISGRACEFUL high-tech lynching in American history; for that is what it was.

Anita Hill was a liar. No serious person could disagree with that. It was obvious. She first wanted to do this "behind the scenes" so her allegations wouldn't be put to the test. The constitution has a provision about "confronting your accuser" but not for Anita Hill. She was too good for that.

When her allegations were put to the test they were destroyed. But then everything got caught up in politics and specifically the politics of sexual harassment.

The thing that really bothered me was how the libs claimed Clarence Thomas wasn't qualified to serve. As if he was held to a lower standard because he was black. He graduated with honors from Holy Cross and was selected to Alpha Sigma Nu, the Jesuit honor society. He graduated from Yale Law School. He fixed an EEOC that was in shambles. He was a sitting circuit court judge. No objective person would assert he wasn't qualified.

This whole incident was the thing that switched me from the Democrat party to the Republican party. Knowing Ginny I felt horrible for her. But watching that liar Anita Hill on national tv and all those people helping her put me over the top. The Left tried to destroy a good, decent and well-qualified man through a process of lies and smears all because they disagreed with his politics. After that I didn't want anything to do with a political party that would engage is such things.

As an aside, Harvard professor Charles Ogletree (an Anita Hill enabler) has recently confessed to plagarism.

The chapters on his early life and the life of Meyers Anderson are fascinating. Maybe the best part of the book. The whole book is a real page-turner. Hard to put down.

Clarence Thomas will have the last laugh. Life-time tenure for another thirty years or so on the Supreme Court. Patience is the revenge of the just man.