Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito: Gone fishin'

The US Supreme Court has a crisis of credibility and legitimacy that has been brought about by the ideological arrogance, grievances, and entitlement of its conservative majority. The court is awash in scandal. Yesterday, a Quinnipiac University poll was released, which found that just 30 percent of registered voters approve of the Supreme Court. This is the lowest approval rating since Quinnipiac starting asking this question in 2004 — and before the publication of another bombshell report from ProPublica that revealed that Samuel Alito had accepted a lavish trip from Paul Singer, a conservative billionaire.

Both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have been exposed as accepting lavish gifts from billionaires with frequent business before the court. The gifts include travel, tuition, private plane flights and other exorbitant gifts. This goes far beyond the appearance of impropriety that every judge — let alone a Supreme Court justice —should be focused on. The stench of judicial corruption can be smelled on the far side of the moon. The conduct is inexcusable. Chief Justice John Roberts stands at the precipice of being the chief who broke the court with his breezy confidence that trust is enduring, and faith absolute in the integrity of the court.

The Chief Justice should understand that delusion and denial are unbecoming from the office of John Marshall. He must act to restore the court’s integrity, or its collapse will become his failure, and the national tragedy his enduring legacy. It gives me no pleasure to write such words as the White House official who ran his confirmation process. I also ran that of Samuel Alito. I defended him from attacks on his ethics and character. I regret my efforts. He was dishonest in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee with his comments claiming fidelity to judicial precedent and landmark rulings. Case in point: Dobbs v. Jackson, which Alito wrote on behalf of the majority. It was all a ruse. A farce.  

Great writing is rare in political journalism. Occasionally, however, there are paragraphs that explode like thunderheads, and perfectly clarify the toxic muddle of our currently crippled political system. Kerry Howley has written a brilliant profile about the marriage of Clarence and Ginni Thomas for the “Intelligencer” column at New York Magazine. The long piece concludes in a searing crescendo that completely, utterly and absolutely describes the court’s reality against its shattered mythology.

It is a mythology I know well — and believed in deeply — during my experiences leading the Roberts and Alito confirmations in the Bush White House. It was profoundly wrong. Here is how Ms. Howley put it:  

Clarence Thomas has served for more than 31 years, longer than any of his fellow justices. Eight times, then, he has watched hearings in which his future colleagues swear fealty to objective jurisprudence rather than personal prejudice. “We don’t turn a matter over to a judge because we want his view about what the best idea is, what the best solution is,” John Roberts said in 2005. “I don’t judge on the basis of ideology,” Sonia Sotomayor said in 2009. Across law schools and among centrist opinion writers, this particular mythos survived the spectacle of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings (“A good judge must be an umpire, a neutral and impartial arbiter”) and through the procedural improprieties of Amy Coney Barrett’s rushed confirmation, wherein she described her job as “going where the law leads.”

It took a lot, is what I am saying, to sweep away this fantasy, to drive the Court’s reputation to its historic low. It took a reckless extremism, the open rebellion of a man showing you his used motor home in his custom yacht polo. It took the marriage of a Black man’s not unjustified fatalism with the boundless white impulse to build walls against unpleasant knowledge; what the late philosopher Charles Mills called “the management of memory.” It took the marriage of a man who needed adulation as shield against self-doubt and a woman who needed a guru to shield her from ambiguity. It entailed the tribal pride of a little girl in a patriotic sash and the agony of a little boy who just wanted to open a second fucking box of cereal.

If there is anything that holds together Clarence Thomas’s belief system, it is a not unsympathetic preference for clarity. Anyone who has experienced discrimination knows what it is to prefer the transparency of open hostility to the obfuscations of condescension and sanctimony, the rattlesnake to the water moccasin. Self-satisfied liberals can confuse their own interests for yours. Affirmative action is messy. Precedent clouds the apparent clarity of the Constitution. Sometimes you just want the subtext to be made text. It is in this spirit that we can appreciate the Thomases’ insistence on revealing the true nature of the nation’s most mythologized judicial institution. The Supreme Court is a political body composed of political actors. In five years’ time, Clarence Thomas will be the longest-serving justice in American history. Harlan will continue to print up custom polos. Ginni will still be waiting for Anita Hill’s apology. And far fewer of us will pretend the Court is constrained by anything but the wild, emotive whims of imperfect people. It’s a gift, at long last, from them to you.

Howley’s conclusion is pure brilliance, and may be the single best explanation that has yet been offered amongst the millions of words that have been written about the collapse of the court’s integrity.

My friend Joyce Vance of Civil Discourse has become the nation’s preeminent legal commentator during this era of chaos and lawlessness. She has a gift for making the law and what is happening in the courts accessible. Take a read of her Substack post about the outlandish corruption of Samuel Alito in full. It is a perfect explanation:

Thanks for All the Fish

The US Supreme Court is a vital institution for the survival of American democracy. This corrupt era is a disgrace, and Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are two of its shining stars. Their conduct is appalling. 

Samuel Alito wanted a taste of the billionaire’s life. He wanted to fly on a plane that cost almost as much as his after-tax yearly salary with a hedge fund mogul, who has made his fortune through high-stakes bets and games of litigation chicken.

I am ashamed to have led Samuel Alito’s confirmation.

Shame on him.

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