A Jeremiad on Jurors and Clarence Thomas Judging Trump

No matter how many bibles they put their hands on when they swear to tell the truth, and no matter how grandiloquent a Court’s Architecture, the moral tenor may recall a whore house.

By

David Gottfried

Prefatory Note for my Readers:  

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Sometimes I appear to be on the left end of the political spectrum.  Sometimes I appear to be on the right end of the political spectrum.  I hope my allegedly zig zagging approach to social and political commentary won’t repel all my readers.   I simply call ‘em as I see ‘em.  If one’s analysis were honest, I think the chance that one would always be either a conservative or a liberal would be close to nil.   The world is not that neatly organized.    We do not live in the Crystal Palaces of 19 th Century English scientists or hoary statis-bound determinists.  Let a little contradiction enter your life, and perhaps the energy produced by the clash of conflicting ideas will put some pep in your step and a smile on your face.  

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Obviously, we want to know if a prospective juror is telling the truth when asked if he has feelings about Donald Trump.

Perhaps, more importantly, we want to know if judges are lying or telling the truth when and if they must adjudge the actions of Mr. Trump.

These questions remind me of a rarely remembered but astonishing and revolting answer, given by Justice Clarence Thomas, in his confirmation hearing upon his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

One of the Senators asked him:   Did you have any feelings, regarding the decision in Roe v. Wade, at the time that decision was promulgated by the U.S Supreme Court.  

If he had said yes, and he had said that he was opposed to the decision, he would have had to recuse himself from all cases, on the US Supreme Court, pertaining to abortion.   Arguably, since he  was opposed to Roe, his mind was made up and he would not have an open mind about any cases, that reached the Supreme Court, regarding abortion.  

Mr. Thomas did not want to tell the truth, and say that he hated Roe v. Wade, because he was in large measure elevated to the Court to strangle Roe and other decisions that had enhanced liberty.  

Therefore, he said that he had no opinions about Roe  v  Wade at the time it had come down from the Supreme Court, a decision that soon elicited all the fanfare and tribulations of the ten commandments coming down from Mount Sinai. 

He said he had no opinions about this monumental decision because, at the time, he was very busy, working very, very hard, in Yale Law School.   Law Students, by and large, are involved in things related to the Law.  Duh ! The decision in Roe v Wade was one of the biggest and most talked about legal developments of the 1970’s.  But Clarence Thomas, channeling Sambo or some other character designed to malign and  belittle black people, said he was just too busy studying law because it was so damn hard and had no time to think about Roe v Wade like some fancy white intellectual.  (Of course, he did not utter those words, but his manner and the image he so expertly evoked – an image of a country yokel trying his darndnest to do his book-learning like a respectable boy who wears shoes to school – was as comforting to white voters in Dixie as extra lard thrown in some “hoppin johns” to make a real country dinner.)    

Obviously, he was lying.  (If he was telling the truth, he should have been ousted from consideration as a judge because someone with so little interest in law or justice or equity has no business being a judge) 

My question:   If prospective judges feel free to make bald-faced lies under oath, should we put much faith in the veracity of most statements made in legal settings.

My second question:   Since Clarence Thomas’ wife suggested  that Donald Trump violate the law to stay in office, since Mr. Thomas frankly lied, regarding Roe v. Wade, during his confirmation hearings, and since it was recently reported that he failed to report significant gifts from parties with business before the High Court, does Thomas have any right to adjudge any cases which in any way pertain to Donald Trump.   

And may we all smugly stay sitting in our seats when  a Judge walks into a courtroom and a court officer hollers, “All rise.”

In closing, I will leave you with a poem I wrote in 1996:

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“Under Oath”

Do you swear to tell the truth

To curb the tenderness of Ruth

Cut it down like John Wilkes Booth

Extract it like a rotten tooth

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And tell the truth that's sort of whole

Exclude the parts that like a mole

Disrupt a prosecutor's role

Expunge the messy heart and soul

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To tell the truth and nothing but

Like a golf ball being putt

Quite rehearsed, of course corrupt

The corporate state's good little mutt

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Will you say so help me G-d

With Bible closed, a blunted rod

The prophets, peas all in a pod

Stamped-out, crushed by trial's trod

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Copyright, David Gottfried, 1996