{"id":205,"date":"2026-05-23T08:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=205"},"modified":"2026-05-23T08:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:37:09","slug":"clarence-thomas-triumphs-and-his-legal-vision-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"Clarence Thomas triumphs \u2014 and his legal vision, too"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

This month, Clarence Thomas became the second-longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history.<\/p>\n

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That milestone would be notable for any jurist.<\/p>\n

For Thomas, it marks something more: the vindication of a constitutional vision that, for decades, was caricatured as eccentric, angry or unserious \u2014 until the court, and the country, began catching up.<\/p>\n

The occasion comes just as Thomas has again demonstrated why his tenure matters.<\/p>\n

In this session\u2019s\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0v.\u00a0Callais,\u00a0the court held\u00a0that Louisiana\u2019s race-driven congressional map could not be justified by a misconstrued Voting Rights Act.<\/p>\n

As my colleague Dan Morenoff has\u00a0explained, Justice Samuel Alito\u2019s majority opinion was correct in tightening Section 2 doctrine so that it no longer forces states into racial sorting.<\/p>\n

But Thomas, joined by Justice Neil Gorsuch, concurred to say what he\u2019s said for over 30 years: Section 2 doesn\u2019t regulate districting at all.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Thomas in full \u2014 he joins the court when it moves toward the Constitution, but doesn\u2019t trim his sails merely because a plurality of colleagues has stopped short of first principles.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0Callais, he praised the court for ending a \u201cdisastrous misadventure\u201d in voting-rights jurisprudence, but added that the statutory text \u2014 \u201cvoting qualification,\u201d \u201cprerequisite to voting,\u201d or \u201cstandard, practice, or procedure\u201d \u2014 doesn\u2019t naturally encompass a state\u2019s choice of district lines.<\/p>\n

In other words, Thomas follows the Constitution wherever it leads \u2014 even when that takes him beyond Alito, and even beyond the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia.<\/p>\n

Thomas has been the most\u00a0radical originalist\u00a0in the best sense: willing to reconsider not only Warren Court inventions but also Progressive Era assumptions, New Deal compromises and conservative half-measures.<\/p>\n

That explains his landmark Second Amendment opinion in\u00a0New York State Rifle and Pistol Association\u00a0v.\u00a0Bruen (2022), which defined the standard by which courts are to evaluate state laws with reference to the nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation.<\/p>\n

His approach has been much maligned \u2014 especially by those who prefer judicial balancing tests that always seem to weigh in favor of government power \u2014 but it has the virtue of treating a constitutional right as a right.<\/p>\n

The same instinct animated Thomas\u2019 concurrence in\u00a0McDonald\u00a0v.\u00a0City of Chicago\u00a0(2010), in which the court, again writing through Alito\u2019s pen, \u201cincorporated\u201d the Second Amendment against the states through the Due Process Clause, as modern doctrine dictated.<\/p>\n

Thomas agreed with that result but rejected the route, casting the decisive fifth vote in his own way.<\/p>\n

The Fourteenth Amendment, he argued, didn\u2019t need the judicial contrivance of \u201csubstantive due process\u201d to protect fundamental rights: Its Privileges or Immunities Clause was written for that work.<\/p>\n

That position remains lonely \u2014 Gorsuch again being the only one to join Thomas\u2019 constitutional crusade.<\/p>\n

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Thomas\u2019 critics often miss his nuance because they insist on psychologizing him.<\/p>\n

They can\u2019t believe that a black man from Pin Point, Ga., could read the Constitution differently from the faculty-lounge consensus \u2014 unless he were acting from resentment, ideology or false consciousness.<\/p>\n

But Thomas\u2019 remarkable American story points in the opposite direction.<\/p>\n

As he wrote in his extraordinary memoir\u00a0\u201cMy Grandfather\u2019s Son,\u201d he was born into desperate poverty in the Jim Crow South, raised by his grandfather, made his way through Catholic schools, Holy Cross, Yale Law and state and federal governments, and\u00a0emerged as a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n

Even then, the key to understanding him was not bitterness but intellectual consistency.<\/p>\n

That consistency was\u00a0on display again last month in Austin, Tex., where Thomas spoke at the University of Texas about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.<\/p>\n

The Constitution, he said, is \u201cthe means of government,\u201d while the Declaration announces its ends.<\/p>\n

That distinction is central to his jurisprudence.<\/p>\n

Rights don\u2019t come from the administrative state, enlightened experts or the latest opinion survey, Thomas maintains.<\/p>\n

Government exists to secure pre-political rights; constitutional structure exists to restrain those who would convert power into benevolence and benevolence into command.<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 influence has grown with time.<\/p>\n

For nearly 35 years he has written separately, dissented alone, returned to text and history, and refused to let bad precedent acquire moral authority merely by aging.<\/p>\n

Now the lonely concurrences are less lonely.<\/p>\n

The old dissents have become roadmaps.<\/p>\n

The justice once dismissed as Scalia\u2019s shadow has proven to be the court\u2019s most consistent constitutionalist.<\/p>\n

Longevity alone is not greatness, to be sure.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

William O. Douglas holds the record for Supreme Court service, and his jurisprudence is head-scratching even to those (progressives) who largely agree with its results.<\/p>\n

But Thomas\u2019 longevity matters because it has given originalism time to mature from slogan to method and from method to law.<\/p>\n

It would thus be fitting if Thomas remains on the bench through May 20, 2028, when he would surpass Douglas as the longest-serving justice in American history.<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be so because records matter in themselves, but because this one would belong to a justice who has done more than almost anyone to restore the court to its proper role: not philosopher-king, not super-legislature, not engine of elite sentiment, but guardian of the Constitution we actually have.<\/p>\n

Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute and author of the\u00a0<\/em>Shapiro\u2019s Gavel<\/em>\u00a0newsletter. From City Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Clarence Thomas\u2019 34-year Supreme Court tenure has given originalism time to mature \u2014 from slogan to method and from method to law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":204,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"yoast_head":"\nClarence Thomas triumphs \u2014 and his legal vision, too - Metro Transit Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=205\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Clarence Thomas triumphs \u2014 and his legal vision, too - Metro Transit Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Clarence Thomas\u2019 34-year Supreme Court tenure has given originalism time to mature \u2014 from slogan to method and from method to law.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=205\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Metro Transit Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-23T08:37:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a3fcc0d76ef059719b401c52c21548a5.webp\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"799\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/webp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/7cd7bd9683106710eed62ba5da559b14\"},\"headline\":\"Clarence Thomas triumphs \u2014 and his legal vision, too\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-23T08:37:09+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205\"},\"wordCount\":925,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/a3fcc0d76ef059719b401c52c21548a5.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Opinion\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/metrotransitreview.com\\\/?p=205\",\"name\":\"Clarence Thomas triumphs \u2014 and his legal vision, too - 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