A Leon Higginbotham wrote a letter to Clarence Thomas pointing out that the title United States Supreme Court as not necessarily being comprised of great minds with the greatest moral consciousness. Judge Higginbotham penned an open letter to the newly appointed United States Supreme Court Judge Thomas, to not blindly follow his peers without questioning their judgments. Higginbotham was warning that the best education credential did not prevent some from breaking the law. In other words, Judge Thomas needed to be watchful and not in awe of his peers educational backgrounds tainted moral values. Especially with the long history of these educated jurists on the United States Supreme Court denying the basic human rights.
As an example, Judge Higginbotham in the letter highlighted the fact that it was a former slaveholder, Justice John Harlan, who attended a little college in Kentucky, who pinned the dissent in Plessy vs. Ferguson. The majority in Plessy suggested the long standing belief tat separate accommodations could be judged as being equal. So what, that one facility for individuals had a commode while the other facility had just a hole, served the same purpose. Four of these Justices signed this majority ruling, that there was no need for certain groups based on blood lines to commingle, has all graduated from the prestigious schools of Yale and Harvard. And more than likely none had ever attended a school with an African-Americans nor question why were there none in their great schools.
These Justices probably supported a value, or a belief system ,that was not based on the legal standards of the Constitution. They may have had shared a common understanding about a group of people and thus upheld those belief in interpreting the Constitution unchallenged. Nevertheless, these Jurists, the four Justices, from fine institutions, one in which Justice Thomas would graduate, refused to follow the truth in their teaching, because who would challenge their thought process?
Higginbotham did want Justice Thomas to think he was bias toward this high Court, and provided some critiques by legal scholars of former Justices on the highest Court in the land. 100 legal scholar would prove the food for thought for Justice Thomas on the first one hundred Justices. Higginbotham wrote, “Eight of the justices were categorized as failures, six as below average, fifty-five as average, fifteen as near great and twelve as great.. Among those ranked as great were John Marshall, Joseph Story, John M. Harlan, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles E. Hughes, Louis D. Brandeis, Harlan F. Stone, Benjamin N.
Cardozo, Hugo L. Black, and Felix Frankfurter.”
One day Justice Thomas will be ranked by legal scholars and hopefully not for his loyalty to a political party.
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