“In his concurrence in
Morse v. Frederick, the “Bong Hits for Jesus” case involving the question of when public school students can be disciplined for expressive behavior, Justice Thomas displayed his ability to understand and explain the deeper importance of a legal rule. The gist of Justice Thomas’s concurrence is that the Constitution should not govern this question, and that students should be disciplined when teachers and school administrators think the discipline is needed. Children, I take Justice Thomas to be saying, are not adults and
schools are not mini-democracies or public forums. The purpose of schools is learning, not talking. No doubt it is sometimes good for children to speak their minds, but there are plenty of children who do that quite enough, and it’s sometimes also good for them to shut up and listen. When they should speak and when they should be quiet is, while they’re in school, for their teachers, and not the courts or the children themselves, to decide.”
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“Professor Nicole Garnett (a former Justice Thomas law clerk), gave me part of the answer:
“He does boring law,” she said. What I took her to mean is that Justice Thomas, unlike at least some of his colleagues, does not think that the technical intricacies of arbitration jurisprudence and application severability are beneath the attention of a Supreme Court Justice. Even when he is writing something that will not be reprinted in a constitutional law casebook or analyzed in a law review article, he insists on getting it right. It's an attractive trait.”
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In in the first case, okay, the 1st Amendment and Freedom of Speech is for adults, not children. Even though teenagers can be a difficult edge case. And schools do not have the primary purpose of a public forum. Alright, understandable views.
In the second case, Okay, he’s willing to get in there and do the boring cases. And yes, that’s an appealing trait.
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I want to pick the two longest-serving and maybe the two shortest-serving of the current Justices and say something good about each one.
No guarantee I’ll finish this project!
www.senate.gov
