With Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist suffering from cancer and nearly certain to retire before the end of George W. Bush's second term, a fierce fight looks to be in order over his successor. The leading candidates for the next Chief Justice, assuming Rehnquist does indeed retire during Bush's term, are current Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
Thomas appeared to have the inside track early on, but his fast track to becoming the first black Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court has hit a snag by the name of Harry Reid, the new Democratic Senate Minority Leader from Nevada.
The big question seems to be, what exactly does Reid have against Thomas? In a Dec. 5, 2004, interview with Tim Russert on "Meet the Press," Reid called Thomas "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court" and said that his opinions were "poorly written."
Reid was let off the hook in that interview when Russert failed to ask him to name an example of a Thomas opinion he thought was poorly written. Then, on Dec. 26, on CNN's "Inside Politics," Reid, when pressed for an example, gave the little-known case of Hillside Dairy vs. Lyons, comparing dissents by Thomas and Scalia, claiming that Thomas' read like "an eighth-grade dissertation" compared to Scalia, which was by "somebody who just graduated from Harvard."
Aside from exactly which eighth-graders in Nevada are writing dissertations, the most obvious question to arise from that interview was exactly which version of the Hillside case Reid was looking at, because Scalia did not even write a dissent in that case, and Thomas' dissent was only over a small portion of the court's decision, and well reasoned within the law.
When confronted with that fact in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Reid did a hurried backtrack, saying he should have merely said that he had voted against Thomas' confirmation as an associate justice and would do so again if he were nominated for chief justice. He also went on to say that his problem with Thomas was that Thomas would "turn precedent on its head."
If memory serves, some of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history were those that overturned precedent: Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe vs. Wade just to name a few. Reid would certainly be stepping out on quite a limb if he were to say that either of those two cases were embarrassments.
Even more curious is that Reid supported Thomas for the associate justice seat, before voting against him, saying that his credentials passed intense scrutiny and that he could find no reason to vote against him. Yet he did, voting no to Justice Thomas' appointment.
So what, exactly, is Reid's beef with Justice Thomas? Could it be that Thomas happens to be a black conservative and that his nomination for chief justice would once again prove that while Democrats like to talk big about being the party that helps minorities, Bush is the one who gives deserving minorities positions of power that they were denied for so long?
Reid has reportedly considered again using filibusters to block Bush's judicial nominations, but if his arguments against Thomas are so flimsy and transparent, one doubts how effectively he could do that. If Rehnquist and perhaps another justice or two retire this term, it could finally be the chance Republicans have been waiting for with the Supreme Court.
Write to Tim at Redbaron.strikesagain@gmail.com
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