On My Mind: Justice Clarence Thomas

ByABC News
December 17, 2000, 5:06 PM

<img src="/media/onair/images/br_simpson_0001.gif" height=100 width=73 hspace=3 align=left>Dec. 17 -- Please allow me just a few more thoughts on the infamous Election of 2000.

Reflecting on the presidential campaign preceding the vote, you may remember how vociferously Gore supporters emphasized that the next president could name as many as three new Supreme Court Justices. Certainly, at least two.

Democratic campaign activists warned that if George W. Bush became president he would most likely appoint justices who would make the high court more conservative than it is now.

They predicted that a second Bush court would overturn Roe v. Wade and affirmative action laws. Bush appointees, they argued, would no doubt rule in favor of rights for whites, males, and the wealthy, and against the rights of blacks and browns, females, and the poor.

If anybody needed a wake-up call on how important the Supremes are it came loudly and clearly last Tuesday night.

Thats when we heard the historic news that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 against Gore in the Florida vote recount case, in effect guaranteeing that Bush the 43rd Presidency of the United States. The future of the Court is now in his hands.

Will he follow in his fathers footsteps? President Bush picked former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Clarence Thomas to fill the enormous shoes left on the high court by the death of Justice Thurgood Marshall, one of historys greatest civil rights lawyers and jurists.

Thomas and Florida Voters

At the time, President Bush said Thomas, with his remarkably limited experience, was the most qualified judge in the nation for the job. Others thought Thomas was the beneficiary of the biggest example of unmerited affirmative action ever undertaken.

In 1998, former U.S. Appeals Court Judge Leon Higginbotham, Jr., an outstanding black jurist now deceased said Justice Thomas, after eight years on the Supreme Court, has done more to turn back the clock of racial progress than has perhaps any other African-American public official in the history of this country.