https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/how-justice-clarence-thomas-led-scotus-kill-dei
Unfortunately, I could not embed the article. Please follow the link above to see what I am discussing.
Here is a little article whose only purpose appears to be to interpret a unanimous Supreme Court decision through a distinctly partisan lens. It appears to have two purposes. One is to portray the ruling as a victory for a “conservative” ideology. The second is to diminish the intellectual authorship of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote the opinion. This anything-but-neutral article insinuates that she was a student of Justice Clarence Thomas rather than acknowledging her as a qualified scholar in her own right who came to her own decisions after analysis of the question.
Having spent most of the article as a paean to Justice Thomas, the article spends no time demonstrating in any way that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson–whose photograph is not even shown–would have ruled differently had she not met Justice Thomas. Unlike the paean to Justice Thomas, there is no listing of previous rulings or editorials or interviews by Justice Jackson demonstrating a view different than the one she expressed in her written opinion on this case. This article implies that Justice Jackson has been schooled due to its lack of mention of her prior work. By omitting her intellectual history on the matter, the article implies her opinion was not independently formed.
The article claims Justice Thomas was the true philosophical author of this decision, but it offers no evidence that Justice Jackson had a different opinion than the one in this unanimous decision. This focus on two justices is disrespectful to the rest of the Court, reducing a unanimous decision to a mere ideological contest. This article is a partisan effort to deny credit to an “enemy” and to the rest of the Court.
This, of course, is sad partisanship at its worst. Having had the opportunity to celebrate a unity that bypasses labels, to reinforce that Constitutional unity that this network claims they desire, they descended into reinforcing the mindset that “we” are the only ones who can correctly interpret the intent of the Founding Fathers. By implication, it means that all agency is denied to Justice Jackson and to the rest of the Court.
Nine Justices agreed; nine Justices voted unanimously; eight Justices agreed that Justice Jackson was the indicated person. Therefore, this was neither a “conservative” nor a “liberal” opinion. By its very unanimity, it was simply “our” opinion. One partisan network decided they knew better than the Court and tried to claim this as a partisan victory. You see the abysmal result in this article.
Leave a Reply