Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas in the United States

Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas, born in 1948, American jurist, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Born in Savannah, Georgia, he earned an A.B. degree from Holy Cross College and the J.D. from Yale Law School before taking a job as assistant attorney general of Missouri (1974-1977). As assistant secretary for civil rights in the U.S. Department of Education (1981-1982) and chairman of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (1982-1989) he earned a reputation as an outspoken black conservative who opposed minority preference programs. He was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1989, and nominated by President George Bush to the Supreme Court in July 1991, replacing the retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Thomas”s already controversial confirmation hearings were jarred by allegations of sexual harassment brought against Thomas by Anita Hill, a law professor who had worked for him in two federal agencies during the 1980s. Adamantly rejecting Hill”s accounts of his alleged misconduct, Thomas described the nationally televised proceedings as a “high-tech lynching” engineered by liberal opponents. The Senate confirmed him in October 1991 by a 52 to 48 vote. (1)

According to theEncyclopedia of the American Constitution, in 1991, President George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated in the retirement of Justice thurgood marshall. Thomas’s qualifications that appealed to Bush were not those of legal accomplishment and judicial experience.

Clarence Thomas (1948-) in relation to Crime and Race

Clarence Thomas (1948-) is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: Clarence Thomas was nominated in 1991 by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and remains one of the most controversial justices on the Court. After a highly contentious judicial hearing, he was confirmed. The judicial hearing attracted considerable attention both from the media and from political action groups, some of which supported his nomination and others that were vehemently opposed. The controversy stemmed from President Bush’s selection to replace Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Associate Justice, who was retiring after a career marked by a history of leadership and activism in civil rights and social justice, with Thomas, a young man, also African American, but who did not share Marshall’s tenacity with respect to social justice. (2)

Resources

Resources

Notes and References

  1. Encarta Online Encyclopedia
  2. Entry about Clarence Thomas (1948-) in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

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