Clarence thomas likes to keep his powder dry. As an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Thomas tends to abstain from the wide-ranging rhetorical struggles many of his colleagues fancy. He chooses his battles carefully; but when he engages, he does so with a clarity of purpose and vision all too rare in contemporary jurisprudence.
It was perhaps fitting that Thomas delivered the tour de force of his young judicial career last June in a concurring opinion in a technical voting rights dispute. For Thomas, Holder v. Hall was the latest episode in a saga of judicial activism that has torn apart our nation’s racial fabric. Thomas’s sweeping call to overturn 25 years of misguided precedents commands far less than majority support on the Court. But in the tradition of great dissents, it is a clarion call that will demand recurrent attention, summed up in one bold word: Enough.
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