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Clarence Thomas: Supreme Court Justice

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Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born in 1948 in Pin Point Georgia. He is now a conservative and controversial judge although initially he had wanted to pursue a religious life as a priest. He was one of the first African American students to attend St. John Vianny’s. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was a turning point in Thomas’ life as he left the seminary and attended Holy Cross University, after overhearing another student make racist remarks about MLK. After graduating with a BA in English, Thomas was admitted to the Missouri Bar on September 1974 and shortly after began work in the office of the Missouri Attorney General. He worked under the supervision of Senator John Danforth until President Reagan offered him a position in …show more content…

While Justice Thomas is famous for his silence during oral argument, this does not mean that his lack of input in cases makes the other justices wary of where he may stand in issues because of his known conservative reputation. What drives his conservative stance on the Supreme Court is his “originalist” philosophy which calls for interpreting the Constitution as the Founding Fathers primary intents were. As Ralph Rossum states “During his years on the Court, Thomas has pursued an original general meaning approach to constitutional interpretation; he has been unswayed by claims of precedent, by the gradual buildup of interpretations that, to his mind, come to distort the original meaning of the constitutional provision in question, leading to muddled decisions and contradictory conclusions” meaning that Thomas determines cases based on strict interpretation of the Constitution and does not think that neither precedent or stare decisis have any weight on recent cases. The only document that has a true significant precedent is the Constitution itself. His judicial philosophy surely makes him an enigma to

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John Marshall altered the Court’s position within the constitutional system and engaged a dynamic battle to sustain the federal authority over the interstate business and in dealings between the states and the federal government. This he did during the thirty-four years he was the chief justice and to date is a legacy in the Court’s history. Marbury v. Madison (1803) marked the commencing of Marshall’s record of achievement in which he justified the Court’s supremacy of judicial review - the rule to assess the constitutionality of state laws and other actions of the government - and put down the foundations of national constitutional jurisprudence. In Fletcher v. Peck (1810), Marshall alleged that a land grant was a contract that a government

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519 Words | 3 Pages

That college is the difficult to received that because is not easy to study there, but sotomayor work hard for received honorary law degrees. Sonia Sotomayor is famous and will continue to have fame because Sotomayor was the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history, On her 43rd birthday, June 25, 1997, she was nominated for U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton, and She has also received honorary law degrees from Herbert H. Lehman College, Princeton University and Brooklyn Law School. Sotomayor was the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S.

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John Marshall’s Supreme Court hearings had a positive effect on the United States. From court cases like McCulloch v. Maryland, declared that the federal courts could decide if state laws were unconstitutional. The McCulloch v. Maryland trial went to the supreme court because Maryland had put a tax in place that too 2% of all assets of the bank or a flat rate of $30,000. John Marshall saw this tax as unconstitutional for the simple fact that people were being denied their property under the state legislature. From the Gibbons v. Ogden case, congress’s power over interstate commerce was strengthened.

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John Marshall had a significant impact on strengthening the national government during his term as Chief Justice from 1800-1830. Marshall achieved this goal by strengthening the power of the Supreme Court in three main court cases. In Marbury v. Madison Marshall established the practice of judicial review, then in McCulloch v. Maryland he weakened the central government and Gibbons v. Ogden provided the federal government with the ability to regulate interstate commerce. Marbury v. Madison (1803) was a court case that began the practice of judicial review. This case started because the night before President John Adams term ended, he appointed 42 justices of the peace.

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504 Words | 3 Pages

The founding father’s idea when they created the Constitution was to prevent a centralized government. As expressed by James Madison in Federalist No. 51, they believe that the power surrendered by people would be divided between the federal and state governments, creating balance of power that would enable both governments to control each other. Over time, the balance of power between the federal and state governments has shifted in favor of the federal government and this has taken place with the help of the Constitution and by enactments of Congress. The role that Chief Justice John Marshall played in defining the power of the federal and state governments during the early 19th century is important to mention because he shaped the nation.

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Thomas Bradley, also known as “Tom”, was on December 29th, 1917 in a small country town in Texas named Calvert (“Tom Bradley,” 2015). Tom came from a slave background. He was the second oldest sibling of five (“Mayor Tom Bradley,” 2009). Bradley grew up wanting to be a police officer and lawyer before finding interest in entering the politics field (“Mayor Tom Bradley,” 2009). He is most known because he made history by becoming the first African American mayor of Los Angeles in 1973 (“Tom Bradley,” 2015).

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25th 1954 in the South Bronx area of New York to parents Juan and Celina Baez Sotomayor. Her parents who were of Puerto Rican descent moved their family to New York for a better opportunity for their children. Her parents worked hard to make a living her mother was a nurse a methadone clinic and her father worked with his hands and the family lived modestly within their means. Justice Sotomayor was diagnosed with type one diabetes at the age of seven and began taking insulin shot’s, shortly after her father died in 1963 when she was nine, leaving her mother as a single parent, during her upbringing her mother Celina placed a huge emphasis on the importance of education, pushing her children to become

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William J. Brennan jr worked very hard to become the judge he was. He graduated from Barringer High School in 1924. He then went on to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1924-1928 with a degree in economics. Finally he finished off his schooling at Harvard Law School where he was a scholarship student and graduated with his J.D(Juris Doctor) in 1931. Brennan was excelling in his school work and turned out to be one of the top in his class.

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Hello diary. I address you today with confusion and apprehension, with consternation and disappointment, disappointment in a country that I fear has let me down. I write to you asking for help, guidance, and strength. I write to you regarding the President’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, hoping the words I write breed clarity and confidence in my future actions. I first heard of Bush’s selection in the paper this morning.

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Booker T. Washington was born on April 5, 1856 and passed away on November 14, 1915. He was a well known educator and civil rights activist. In the year 1895, Booker T. Washington openly set forth his reasoning on race relations in a discourse at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta, Georgia, known as the "Atlanta Exposition Address of 1895. " In his dialog, Washington conveyed that African Americans ought to acknowledge the dissatisfaction and social isolation the length of whites permit them financial advancement, instructive open door and equity in the courts. In the North, this started a chance for activism for other African Americans.

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Booker T. Washington was born in the South April 5, 1856 and was educator, author, orator, and advisor to presidents of the United States. He was also the most influential black leader of his time between 1856 and 1915. Booker T.

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Justice Thurgood Marshall Response Justice Thurgood Marshall said in his “Reflections on the Bicentennial of the United States Constitution”, “I do not believe the meaning of the Constitution was forever ‘fixed’ at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, that we hold as fundamental as today” (Marshall). In this passage of his essay, Judge Marshall is critical of the government that is

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was born January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. His father was a pastor at a local church, while his mother took care of his two siblings, Willie and Alfred. As King began to get older, he “attended Booker T. Washington High School” (www.biography.com). Martin Luther King Jr. was exceptional throughout his studies and even “skipped ninth and eleventh grade...attending college when he was only fifteen years old” (www.biography.com). After completing his master's degree, King “began his doctorate at Boston College, where he met Coretta Scott” (www.biography.com).

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“O’Brian, we need you to get a better look at Winston. This is not a request, comrade, it is a demand.” A voice behind me whispered I bit my tongue as I was about to say something but the man walked directly in front of me to where I couldn’t get a glimpse of his face, all I got of him was his broad wide shoulders. My heart was in my stomach, I took a deep breath, and trudged into the Two Minutes of Hate.

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The boy was caged within a painting. A painting drawn from a practiced yet shaking hand. It was a painting drawn from fear, a painting drawn in order to escape. The shading was perfect, if not too perfect. The lines were neat, if not too neat.

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