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Justice Clarence Thomas: A Journey into American Ideals

Justice Clarence Thomas United States Supreme Court

GUEST: James Valliant San Diego-based prosecuting attorney and author of The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics In his "dissenting opinion" in the Kelo vs New London eminent domain case, United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas takes us on a journey into the thinking and the spirit of the American Founding Fathers. With San Diego based attorney, James Valliant, we analyse Justice Thomas's approach and learn about how the framers of the American Constitution approached defending man's rights - defending it against the very kinds of people represented by Justice Stevens and the Supreme Court's majority opinion!

Topics covered include ...

• Early influences on Justice Clarence Thomas include Thomas Sowell and Ayn Rand.
• Framers of the American Constitution sought to create a scientific, rational way to achieve justice.
• Reading Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion in Kelo v New London is a journey into the soul of America.  A history lesson!
• Thomas and  Scalia, in their decisions, will take the reader on an historical excursion of the way that the language was understood at the time of the writing of the constitution.
• What did “public use” mean at the time of the writing of the constitution?
• What did the Supreme Court majority decision do with the term?
• Is the 5th Amendment about giving the government the permission to take property, or about limiting the government’s power to take it?
• What did Justice Thomas have to say about this?
• The 9th and 10th Amendments –> read the rights of the individual people broadly and the rights given to the government narrowly.
• The purpose of the constitution as a whole is ... ?
• The British Civil War. The development in Britain of a radical ideology that influenced the American Founding Fathers.
• The Founders’ study of ancient history and how democracy was lost in Athens and the Republic was lost in ancient Rome.
• Enlightenment scientists as statesmen.
• Justice Thomas quotes Blackstone’s defense of private property as the foundation of law.
• Rights are a unity.
• The Campaign Finance Reform Bill – how it failed to understand the unity of rights. Commercial speech. Justice Thomas is the consistent advocate of free speech and property rights – the best Justice on the Supreme Court in these areas.
• Thomas’s accusation that the majority decision on Kelo v New London seeks to eliminate liberties expressly enumerated in the Constitution.
• The intended purpose of the Supreme Court and how the court has broken loose from it’s moorings.
• James Valliant’s one criticism of Thomas’s and Scalia’s “historical excursion” style.
• Valliant says that more than any other Supreme Court Justice in recent memory, Clarence Thomas clearly understands that rights are an individual thing – it’s the individual that possesses rights.
• Thomas’s entire conception of the constitution is as a limitation on government. 
• Not all Supreme Court  Justices view the constitution in it’s total purpose as a limitation on government.
• How to read the Constitution.
• “Necessary and proper…” an elastic clause.
• The inversion of the 5th Amendment by the Supreme Court of the United States.
• The Supreme Court’s use of precedence to destroy the very constitutional rights they are charged to protect.