Justice Clarence Thomas

by Jeremy Leaming

Before this week’s marathon oral arguments in the case challenging health care reform, many legal scholars, had strongly argued that the challengers’ arguments did not have a serious chance of surviving Supreme Court scrutiny.

Primarily the reasoning was based on high court precedent in favor of a broad reading of Congress’ power to regulate commerce and to tax and spend for the general welfare.

But those perceptions have been rocked following three lengthy days of oral argument, in which Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito appeared to have bought the challengers’ arguments against the minimum coverage provision, and, at times, revealed utter callousness toward national lawmakers’ attempt to reform a terribly inefficient and exclusive health care system that has left tens of millions uninsured.

Moreover as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman noted, several of the justices appeared utterly or willfully ignorant of how “insurance works.” Krugman said Scalia’s comparison of purchasing health care insurance to buying broccoli “horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.”

“Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick – which what happens in the absence of a mandate – the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those  who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn’t work, and never has,” Krugman wrote.

Walter Dellinger, former Solicitor General, at an ACS briefing on the oral arguments in HHS v. Florida, said it appeared, based mostly on their questions that three justices look ready to strike the minimum coverage provisions. Justice Samuel Alito’s questions were almost as hostile as Scalia’s and most, including Dellinger, believe Justice Clarence Thomas will vote to invalidate the law’s integral provision.

But Dellinger (pictured) is still holding out hope that two more justices will not join those three in killing health care reform.

“If there were five,” he said, “I would be shocked, because I think it would take us back to the jurisprudence of the 1920s. I think it would be the most stunning and indefensible judicial decision in half a century. It would be paired with Bush v. Gore in the law books forever.”

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By Sherrilyn Ifill, Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law

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Last week, most of the mainstream media seemed anxious to move on from the story of Virginia Thomas' bizarre early morning phone call to the office of Professor Anita Hill, in which she invited Hill to apologize to Thomas for "what you did with my husband." But The Washington Post's subsequent, explosive interview with Clarence Thomas' former girlfriend who has corroborated much of Anita Hill's 1991 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, has laid to rest the idea that this story is over. And indeed this episode is deserving of more attention. It's important because there are so many people who have no real memory of the Thomas confirmation hearings, or why they were so important. In their attempt to get past addressing Mrs. Thomas' bewildering conduct, some media outlets had dismissed the Thomas hearings as a mere "he said/she said" exchange of accusations. In fact, the Thomas hearings - both before and after the statements raised by Anita Hill were made public - constituted an important watershed moment in confirmation hearings, in our understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace, and even in our racial discourse. The temptation by the media to treat this as a non-story or to minimize its significance should be resisted.

And in fact that's part of the story. Perhaps in part because the Thomas hearings were so painful, so ugly, so disturbing, Justice Thomas is often given a pass by the press. Some of his most inflammatory decisions on the Court - often in concurrence or dissent - are rarely remarked on by Supreme Court writers and bloggers. As I've suggested, even the problematic nature of some of Mrs. Thomas' political activities have been soft-pedaled by court watchers. But we should not soft-pedal history. These were the hearings at which Thomas assured the Committee that once confirmed he would hold no allegiance to the conservative views he'd advanced as a conservative darling and former member of the Reagan Administration. Long before Chief Justice John Roberts promoted the image of the "umpire" judge who just "calls balls and strikes," Thomas introduced us to another empty sports metaphor - promising that he would "strip down like a runner" and shed his earlier ideological views to be an impartial justice. Thomas also sought to reassure the Judiciary Committee and the public, that despite his earlier harsh words about civil rights leaders, and his own less than stellar stewardship of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), that he felt empathy (yes, empathy) for those less fortunate. He insisted that when from his office he could see a bus of prisoners in Washington, D.C., he felt, "there but for the grace of God, go I."

But it was the hearings after Anita Hill's statements came to light that truly riveted the nation. Hill had worked for Thomas at the EEOC. Both were conservatives. Thomas had been serving on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals for little over a year when he was tapped by President George H.W. Bush who implausibly called the unremarkable Thomas, the "best candidate" for the job.