Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s commitment to following legal precedent Thursday, as the high court gears up to revisit major rulings holding back Donald Trump’s sweeping policy agenda.
Speaking at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C. Thursday evening, Thomas said it was time to rethink a commitment to “stare decisis,” a legal principle that the court should stand by things decided previously.
“It’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” Thomas said.
“We never go to the front, see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train,” Thomas said, ostensibly comparing decades of previous decisions by justices sitting in his very same position to the attitudes of apes.
“I don’t think that I have the gospel,” Thomas said, “that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
If Thomas’s remarks are anything to go by, the conservative majority is set to flip major precedents during the upcoming session.
In December, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing his New Deal policies.
Earlier this week, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission, and had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Breaking with precedent on Humphrey will allow Trump to continue his unfettered firing campaign against Democratic appointees.
The Supreme Court is also set to consider whether to roll back anti-gerrymandering rules established by the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, as part of Louisiana’s suit challenging the use of race in redistricting efforts. Trump’s Department of Justice filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that the VRA does not provide “a compelling interest that can justify race-predominant districting” and urging the Court to lay waste to the landmark decision.
The post Clarence Thomas Says the Supreme Court Is Coming for More Precedents appeared first on New Republic.
