Putting Thurgood Marshall On Trial

One of the more insane things that happened so far during the confirmation hears for Elena Kagan - and there have been a number generated by the GOP and it's untethered witnesses - has been the attack made on former Justice Thurgood Marshall. Marshall - considered an icon by many - was depicted as an activist if not a radical. Marshall's son - a classmate of my late sister at UVA - has an op-ed in today's Washington Post that takes these accusations head on. The true activists and radicals are the members of the increasingly sectarian GOP, not Marshall who simply wanted the U.S. Constitution to be applied literally as written and applicable to all citizens. Once again, it is the Republicans and that party's Christianist masters that want special rights for themselves based on race, religious belief, and national origin. Here are highlights from Thurgood Marshall, Jr.'s op-ed:
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I believe that this spectacle is partly a result of my father having lived a life of consequence as a practicing attorney and as a jurist. The rhetoric serves as a reminder that President Lyndon Johnson displayed wisdom and great courage in nominating my father to the Supreme Court. Yes, he had served as solicitor general of the United States and as a federal appellate judge who authored more than 90 opinions without a single reversal, but as notable is what he did before holding those positions.
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When my father was confirmed 69 to 11, more than four decades ago, that historic act came after he worked for years in private practice drafting wills, trying murder cases and engaging in all legal issues in between; after working in the courts to bring long-overdue voting rights to the disenfranchised and to desegregate schools.
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If there is to be a new round of battles on those issues, then I suspect that the victory margin would be far greater since legions of Americans of every stripe regard the resolutions of those issues as achievements that make our union more perfect. If there is to be a new round of battles over my father's jurisprudence, his vision of the role of the courts or his belief in the 14th Amendment, then I like those odds, too.
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A debate this week about judicial activism seems to have revealed only one thing: One person's activism is another's adherence to constitutional principle. And to my ear, a progressive jurist sounds far more desirable than a regressive one.
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Justice Marshall spent much of his life striving to make the USA a more just nation. His latter day GOP critics have a totally opposite goal Their vision of this nation ought to scare the Hell out of thinking Americans.