An Outsider's Guide to the Supreme Court Justices (pt. 1)

While Supreme Court justices ought to be nonpartisan, the fact that they have to be nominated by the President and approved by Congress meant that they’re often chosen to serve partisan agendas. Thus it’s important to understand who they are in order to understand American politics.

I took their education, career background, and pictures from the Supreme Court’s website before adding my own commentary:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

John G. Roberts, Jr., Chief Justice of the United States

Chief Justice Roberts graduated with Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1976 and a J.D. from Harvard in 1979. He served as a law clerk for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as then-Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist of the Supreme Court. He served as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Associate Counsel to President Reagan, White House Counsel’s Office, and as Principal Deputy Solicitor General. Between those he practiced law in Washington, D.C. He served as a Judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and was nominated as Chief Justice of the United States by President George W. Bush to replace the deceased Chief Justice William Rehnquist, taking office on September 29, 2005.

He’s personally conservative and tends to rule more conservative, but as Chief Justice, he’s keenly aware of the increasing public distrust of the Court due to escalating partisanship. Chief Justice Roberts is concerned with maintaining the Court’s legitimacy and as a result is regarded by some as an institutionalist, rather than affiliation with either ideological bloc. As an institutionalist, he works to establish consensus and often sides with the liberal bloc, possibly even against his own personal beliefs. Curiously, in Dobbs v Jackson, he voted with the majority to uphold the Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks but did not join the rest of his fellow conservatives in overturning Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey that had previously guaranteed a right to abortion.

Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice

Justice Clarence Thomas was the first in his family to attend college.  He received a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from College of the Holy Cross in 1971 and a J.D. from Yale in 1974. He served as an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri from 1974-1977; an attorney with a private company; legislative Assistant to Senator John Danforth; Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education; and Chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. He served as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 1990–1991, until President H. W. Bush nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court to replace the liberal stalwart Thurgood Marshall  when he passed. 

Thomas had a very contentious confirmation hearing. Thomas being a staunch conservative, liberal interest groups that had successfully blocked conservative Judge Robert Bork’s nomination four years earlier dusted off those same strategies against him. There were also doubts regarding his competency. For instance, the American Bar Association only rated him as “qualified”, as opposed to the “well-qualified” rating most nominees to the Supreme Court receive. A motion by the Senate Judiciary Committee to send Thomas’ nomination to the Floor with a favorable recommendation had failed, and the nomination was sent without a recommendation. When the confirmation hearings were drawing to a close, allegations by Anita Hill, a former coworker, of sexual assault emerged and the hearings were reopened. Ultimately, Thomas was divisively confirmed by a margin of four votes. One would have to go to Justice Matthews in 1881 for a closer margin. 

Thomas continues to be a figure of controversy. He is an originalist, believing the Constitution should be interpreted by the original understanding, when the Constitution was first written in the 18th century. With perhaps the exception of Justice Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas is regarded as the most conservative justice, and even more willing than Scalia to overturn legal precedents, including voicing opposition to Roe v Wade and Gideon v Wainwright. He also goes even further right than Scalia by defending the legal philosophy of strict constructionism, meaning to interpret law as it is exactly literally written. More recently, his wife Ginni Thomas sides with Trump’s false accusations of election fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election, and Clarence Thomas was exposed as having accepted luxury trips from Republican mega donor Harlan Crow for more than two decades, which Thomas had never financially disclosed before.

Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Associate Justice

Justice Samuel Alito graduated from Princeton with Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude. During his time at Princeton he led the oldest debate union in the United States and chaired a student conference in 1971 that advocated for the creation of statutes and a court to oversee national security surveillance as well as ending discrimination against gays in hiring by employers. He received his JD from Yale in 1975.He was in Army ROTC and commissioned as a signal officer in the Army Reserve, honorably discharged in 1980. He clerked for Leonard I. Garth of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit from 1976–1977. He also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, 1977–1981 and later U.S. Attorney, District of New Jersey, 1987–1990. He was also an Assistant to the Solicitor General 1981–1985 and Deputy Assistant Attorney General, 1985–1987. He was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1990. President George W. Bush nominated him to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor after moving his first nominee for that role, John Roberts, (sounds familiar?) to replace Chief Justice Rehnquist and his second nominee withdrew due to widespread opposition. Alito took his seat January 31, 2006.

Alito is also a conservative originalist, but he differs from other conservative justices, even ones as conservative as Thomas or Scalia, in his partisanship. While Thomas stuck to the ideology of originalism, wherever that interpretation leads, Alito calls himself a “practical originalist” and is willing to bend the rules to achieve social conservative ends. One article describes his tendency to do so as “with plodding consistency”.  He is most recently known, or rather infamous, for not only penning the majority decision in Dobbs v Jackson that struck down Roe v Wade, but also doubling down in that decision and gloating about it. Alito also faces ethics doubts due to his relationship with billionaire Paul Singer, and his preemptive op-ed countering the exposé about it before that article had even been published.