
Thomas in a highly unflattering light, were among the documents at issue. The physical records of Ginni Thomas’s communications with the White House, records which would have otherwise remained unknown to the public and which proved to show Mrs. But there was more at stake in this case than mere beliefs. Her views may not necessarily be his, and all judges sit with the presumption, fictitious or not, that they will ignore their own political beliefs in deciding cases. We now know that Ginni Thomas, Justice Thomas’s wife and a breast-beating champion of extreme-right causes, had exchanged 29 text messages with Meadows, urging him to adopt an array of wacky conspiracy theories for overturning the 2020 election.Īlito’s declaration that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start” is “a statement of legendary arrogance and epic disrespect.”Įxtreme or not, Ginni Thomas’s political beliefs do not constitute a basis for disqualifying Justice Thomas. Among the records the committee wanted were those of White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Congress was seeking to overcome ex-president Trump’s assertion of executive privilege to prevent the release of records of his administration from the National Archives. The case involved a suit by the congressional committee investigating the January 6, 2020, insurrection at the Capitol. In January, Justice Clarence Thomas participated in a decision that he seemingly should not have, under the statute governing disqualification of federal judges. The leak of the Alito draft was hardly the only breach of the Court’s norms this term.

Mans nipple photo supreme court series#
And a series of recent events have demonstrated that Roberts’s authority and his traditionalist approach are being increasingly disregarded, as his Court’s ethical standards plunge and its credibility is incrementally eroded. Justice Barrett’s addition left Roberts outflanked on the right by five justices. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Roberts, unlike Alito, seemed to be suggesting a centrist approach: one that would sustain the Mississippi law in issue, which forbids abortion after 15 weeks, by shoehorning it into the Roe framework, leaving no need to overrule that case. At oral arguments on the case in question, Dobbs v. A dignified traditionalist, Roberts has led the Court for 17 years, trying to steer a middle course to ensure that the paramount judicial entity in the land continues to command broad respect among Americans and does not appear to be an overtly political institution. Notably, the one conservative who might not have joined Alito’s draft-and one of the loudest lamenters of the leak-was the chief justice, John Roberts. Whether the leak came from someone associated with the Court’s newly emboldened extreme-right majority, which has engaged in other acts reflecting diminished respect for the Court’s norms and traditions, or as a tit for tat from someone on the left, hoping to preview or mobilize the outrage that will greet Alito’s opinion, if issued, it was a grave violation of the Court’s long-held protocols protecting the confidentiality of its deliberations. Wade, along with the constitutional right to abortion that it recognized, is yet another distressing sign of an institution in increasing disarray. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito’s first draft of an opinion overturning the 50-year-old precedent of Roe v.
