Academic

Clarence Thomas "Welcomes" Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court

By Eric Muller

The Rehnquist Court tradition was to give a new Justice a unanimous opinion for his or her first assignment. The media is reporting that that's what happened today with Mohawk Industries v. Carpenter.

The media are reporting that the tradition was followed.

I call B.S. 

Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in the judgment (in part), so the Court was not unanimous except as to the judgment.  What's more, Thomas decided to talk a little trash about (of all things) one of the very things for which Sotomayor was criticized in the debate about her confirmation -- making "value judgments" and subordinating a statute to what she "thinks is a good idea."

For a guy who is so good at holding his tongue, he picked a bad moment to speak.

Totally rude.

UPDATE:  This article confirms the existence of the tradition of assigning a new Justice a unanimous opinion -- though it has been pointed out to me that the Court did not follow the tradition when Justice Breyer was the new Justice.  The current Chief Justice is, if anything, a bigger fan of unanimous opinions than was Rehnquist, so the departure from the practice of unanimity  seems a bit more noteworthy here than it might otherwise be.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).