Liberal Legal Scholars Reassess Clarence Thomas and Finally Acknowledge His Jurisprudential Brilliance [UPDATED]

My favorite Supreme Court Justice, and one of the greatest men I have ever had the honor of meeting, is finally receiving his proper due and grudging respect from the liberals that make up the bulk of constitutional legal scholars:

Lord of the Rings aficionados know that the evil lord Sauron paid little attention to the danger posed by two hobbits slowly struggling across the mountains and deserts of Mordor until he suddenly realized that the ring on which all his power depended was about to be hurled into the pits of Mount Doom. All at once the enemy plan became clear; what looked like stupidity was revealed as genius, and Sauron understood everything just when it was too late to act.

Jeffrey Toobin’s gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker gives readers new insight into what Sauron must have felt: Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.

In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.

[...]

At most liberals have long seen Thomas as the Sancho Panza to Justice Antonin Scalia’s Don Quixote, Tonto to his Lone Ranger. No, says Toobin: the intellectual influence runs the other way. Thomas is the consistently clear and purposeful theorist that history will remember as an intellectual pioneer; Scalia the less clear-minded colleague who is gradually following in Thomas’ tracks.

If Toobin’s [revisionist] take is correct, (and I defer to his knowledge of the direction of modern constitutional thought) it means that liberal America has spent a generation mocking a Black man as an ignorant fool, even as constitutional scholars stand in growing amazement at the intellectual audacity, philosophical coherence and historical reflection embedded in his judicial work... (emphasis added)

[Definitely read the whole thing, as well as Toobin's piece]

My Comments:
High time that the community of legal and constitutional scholars began to recognize and openly acknowledge what I have long known about this brilliant man.


UPDATE
And let's be clear about one thing: Justice Thomas' chief crime in the eyes of his left-wing critics has never been that he couldn't think for himself, as they have so often accused him, but rather that he DARED to think for himself rather than subscribing to the groupthink orthodoxy that supposedly condemns all African-Americans to having to think and act a certain way in order to be "authentically black".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on the subject:
Pay No Attention to the Caricature Painted by His Mean-Spirited Detractors ...

Kmiec's "Bridge Too Far"? Obama's Attacks on Justice Thomas

Sen. Obama Demeans Justice Thomas' Intellect [UPDATED]

National Review on Justice Clarence Thomas' New Memoir

Justice Clarence Thomas Tells 60 Minutes That Abortion Was Real Issue at His Confirmation Hearings

The Supreme Court’s Most Interesting Catholic

Defending Justice Thomas

Reading the Constitution Right: The Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas