Last Saturday at the Saddleback Church forum, when asked which Supreme Court Justices he would not have appointed, Senator Obama first said he would not have appointed Clarence Thomas. There is a fine Wall Street Journal Opinion, “Obama on Clarence Thomas.”
Although “race” is irrelevant in regards to the ability of an individual to competently act in a position, “race” has been an unavoidable and central issue in the current presidential election. Senator Obama’s statements should be taken in light of the fact that Justice Clarence Thomson is only the second black man to sit on the bench of the highest court in the United States, and the only black individual currently on the Supreme Court. However, Senator Obama, dubbed by some as the “Post Racial Candidate,” stated that:
I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don’t think that he, I don’t think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution.
Senator Obama also states that he would not have nominated Justice Antonin Scalia because he disagrees with his views, “Although I don’t think there is any doubt about his intellectual brilliance.” The article lists all of Justice Thomas’ qualifications, including working at the Missouri Attorney General’s office, serving as an Assistant Secretary of Education, running the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and sitting for a year on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the nation’s second most prominent court. If you watch the video where Sen. Obama is making this statement, he starts to say, “I don’t think that he was an ex,” and then stops. It sounds like Sen. Obama started to state that, “I don’t think that he was an experienced…” this is conjecture of course, yet very reasonable conjecture. But it certainly sounds like Sen. Obama was going to critique Justice Thomas’s supposed lack of experience as a jurist.
Setting aside the face that Justice Thomson is actually quite experienced, Barack Obama was wise not to directly critique Justice Thomson’s lack experience, lest someone critique Senator Obama’s lack of experience. But it is a good idea to look at Senator Obama’s career and experience level.
Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004, and was sworn in on January 4th, 2005. Obama has been a U.S. Senator from 2005 to the present.[1] Since then he has 143 days of experience in the Senate. The 143 days of experience being when Senate was actually in session and working.
The Illinois Senator has a J.D. from Harvard Law school, he graduated magna cum laude, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review then President of the Harvard Law Review. Senator Obama is unquestionably a very intelligent individual. His background unquestionably qualifies him to disagree with Justice Thomson’s interpretation of the Constitution. However, to call Justice Thomas a weak jurist is an unfounded allegation. The WSJ Opinion: “Obama on Clarence Thomas,” articulates this point quite well. For the full Saddleback Forum Coverage, visit: trevinwax.com.
- Wikipedia.org: Barack Obama, Early life and career [↩]
Tags: Barack Obama, Clarence Thomas, Politics
