Clarence Thomas: A Study In Corruption

Lord Acton noted 136 years ago that "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."  A case in point is Justice Clarence Thomas who we are finding out has used his seat on the U.S. Supreme over the last decades to receive millions in gifts and lavish trips and never reported any of it despite the legal obligation to do so. With a life time appointment and the threat of removal through impeachment unlikely given the party split in the U.S. Senate and current GOP control of the House of Representatives, Thomas - as well as his delusional wife - arrogantly feels he can do whatever he wants, caring nothing for the further damage he is doing to the already tattered reputation of the Court (Thomas' corruption is on top of the fact that three sitting justices likely lied under oath during their confirmation hearings).  As an associate justice, Thomas' annual federal salary is as of this year $285,000.00.  Certainly not an insignificant income but one that doesn't go far in an expensive metropolitan area like Washington, D.C., and the northern Virginia suburbs.  For Thomas to pretend that gifts totaling many times his annual income have no bearing on his votes on the Court is an insult to sentinent individuals.  A column in the New York Times looks at Thomas' use of his position on the Court like a winning lottery ticket and the need to impose restraints on the members of the Court.  Here are excerpts:

We have Clarence Thomas to thank for the latest illustration of how the Supreme Court’s outsize power, isolation and virtual immunity from public pressure has made it a magnet for corruption and influence-peddling.

For more than 20 years, according to an investigation by ProPublica, Justice Thomas received lavish and expensive gifts — including luxury trips to private resorts — from Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire and real estate developer with a long record of extensive support for Republican politicians, conservative media and the Federalist Society.

Under a federal law passed after Watergate, it appears that Thomas was supposed to disclose these gifts and trips to the government. He hasn’t. Instead, Thomas has lived a lavish life on the largess of his rich confidant while posing, in public, as the most humble and unassuming of the justices. In return, Crow has gotten direct access to one of the most influential and powerful men in America.

If Thomas were an ordinary federal judge, this conduct would be an obvious — and flagrant — violation of the judiciary’s code of ethics. But that code doesn’t actually bind the nine members of the Supreme Court. For them, it is mere guidance.

For his part, Thomas denies wrongdoing.

And while several Democrats, most notably Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have called for investigations and even impeachment, there’s no real expectation that Thomas will even answer questions about his conduct, much less face consequences for it. He is still as free as he’s ever been to treat his seat on the court — ostensibly a public trust — like a winning lottery ticket, to redeem with the nearest friendly billionaire (who happens to have a collection of Nazi paraphernalia and Hitler-related souvenirs).

Last year, in the wake of a different Supreme Court ethics scandal — involving a sophisticated and well-funded influence operation aimed at Republican justices like Thomas and Samuel Alito — I wrote about the problem of lifetime tenure for judges and justices. The framers of the Constitution embraced service on “good behavior” because they wanted a truly independent judiciary, free from the corruption and venality of ordinary politics.

But, I asked, “What if lifetime tenure, rather than raising the barriers to corruption, makes it easier to influence the court by giving interested parties the time and space to operate?” My answer was that it does. Nothing that has happened since makes me think any differently.

There is a second point to make here, one that harks back to arguments from the anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution.

Turning his eye to the Supreme Court, the writer who called himself Brutus blanched at the power and authority that the Philadelphia convention entrusted in such a small group of men. “Every body of men invested with office are tenacious of power,” he wrote. “The same principle will influence them to extend their power, and increase their rights” and, he continued, “enlarge the sphere of their own authority.”

“No free people ever reposed power in so small a number,” he said.

Although I can’t say for certain, it sounds like both Brutus and Chase are channeling Machiavelli’s observation that “the few always behave in the mode of the few.” Build an exclusive, oligarchical institution, and you’ll get an exclusive, oligarchical politics.

This has always been true of the Supreme Court — a reliable friend of property, capital and class rule throughout its 234-year history, occasional bouts of decency notwithstanding — but it has become an acute problem in this era of unchecked judicial supremacy. As the court arrogates more and greater power to itself, and grows both distant from and contemptuous of public opinion, it naturally attracts flatterers and intriguers.

With his close ties to a powerful, property-owning billionaire, Thomas embodies the historic role of the Supreme Court in American politics, not as a liberator or defender of the rights of political and social minorities, but as a partner to and ally of moneyed interests.

The Supreme Court is not going to police itself. The only remedy to the problem of the court’s corruption — to say nothing of its power — is to subject it to the same checks and limits we associate with the other branches. The court may adjudicate disputes within the constitutional order, but it does not exist above or outside its reach. In practice, this means the Democratic Party will have to abandon its squeamishness about challenging and shaping the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Whether it’s through structural change or a simple ethics code, it is up to elected officials to remind the court that it serves the republic, and not the other way around.

We have a poor record of elite accountability in American politics. But even by our pitiful standards, we seem to be living in an era of almost total impunity for people of influence. Both the powerful and their apologists treat political authority as a grant of freedom from rules, responsibilities, duties and obligations. You see it in the case of Justice Thomas, whose defenders say he is the victim of a smear campaign.

This is not how a republic should work. Our leaders — who chose to vie for influence — should be shackled by the power they wield, not free to abuse it for their own interests and their own pleasures. And if they won’t act in the spirit of public service, then we should make them.