WASHINGTON (AP) – Judge Clarence Thomas says the Supreme Court was changed by the shocking leak of a draft opinion earlier this month. The opinion suggests that the court is ready to overturn the right to abortion, recognized nearly 50 years ago in the Roe v. Wade.
Conservative Thomas, who joined the court in 1991 and has long called for Rowe v. Wade to be overturned, described the leak as an unthinkable breach of trust.
“When you lose that trust, especially in the institution I am in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You start looking over your shoulder. “It’s kind of infidelity that you can explain it, but you can’t undo it,” he said as he spoke at a conference in Dallas on Friday night.
The court said the draft did not represent the final position of any of the members of the court, and Chief Justice John Roberts had ordered an investigation into the leak.
Thomas, nominated by President George W. Bush, said that before the May 2 opinion expired, it was beyond “anyone’s imagination” that even a number of draft opinions would be released in advance, let alone an entire project that works almost 100 pages. Politico also reported that in addition to Thomas, Conservative judges Neil Gorsuch, Brett Cavanaugh and Amy Connie Barrett voted with the author of the draft opinion, Samuel Alito, to repeal Rowe v. Wade and the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey Rowe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion.
Thomas said that before that “if someone says that one line of opinion” will expire, the answer would be: “Oh, that’s impossible. No one would ever do that. “
“Now that trust or that faith is gone forever,” Thomas told the Old Parkland conference, which describes itself as a conference “to discuss alternative proven approaches to tackling the challenges facing black Americans today.”
Thomas also said at one point: “I think what happened in court is extremely bad … I wonder how long we will have these institutions with the speed with which we are undermining them.”
Thomas also touched on the protests of the Liberals in the homes of conservative judges in Maryland and Virginia, which followed the publication of the draft opinion. Thomas claims that the Conservatives have never acted in this way.
“You would never visit the houses of Supreme Court judges when things are not going our way. We did not erupt in anger. “I think it’s … it’s our duty to always act appropriately and not pay off, unfortunately,” he said.
Protests are also expected in the Supreme Court and across the country on Saturday.
Thomas spoke to the audience as part of a conversation with John Yu, who is now a law professor at Berkeley but worked for Thomas for a year in the early 1990s as a lawyer.
Each judiciary usually has four judicial staff each year, and the current group of judicial staff is the subject of speculation as a possible source of information leaks from the draft opinion. They are one of the few groups, along with judges and some administrative staff, to have access to draft opinions.
Thomas also answered several questions from the audience, including one who asked about friendships between liberal and conservative judges in court, such as the well-known friendship between the late liberal judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the late conservative judge Antonin Scalia. “How can we promote the same kind of relationship in Congress and among the general public?” The man asked.
“Well, I’m just worried about keeping him in court now,” Thomas said. He continued to speak brilliantly about former colleagues. “This is not the court of that era,” he said.
Despite his comments, Thomas looked in good spirits, laughing heartily at times. Yu, who is known for writing the so-called “notes on torture” that the George W. Bush administration used to justify the use of “intensified interrogation” techniques after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said at one point that it was took pictures of the notes Thomas took during the conference.
“Will you betray them?” Thomas asked, laughing.
Yu replied, “Well, I know where to go … Politico will publish everything I give them now.”
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