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00:00:54.680Welcome back to this special edition of Verdict with Ted Cruz
00:00:58.540and my one-on-one conversation with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
00:01:04.500In part one, we explored the remarkable journey that shaped the man.
00:01:09.240Now we turn to the justice, his more than three decades on the Supreme Court,
00:01:13.640his approach to the Constitution, and why he believes its protections
00:01:18.660belong not to judges, not to law professors, but to every single American.
00:01:26.060Here's part two of my conversation with Justice Clarence Thomas.
00:01:36.080By any measure, one of your greatest legacies on the court, and there are many, but has been on race,
00:01:42.180and you have been a clarion voice in your entire tenure on the court for the principle that the Constitution does not allow racial distinctions,
00:01:53.340It does not allow racial discrimination.
00:01:55.360The Constitution is colorblind and protects everyone.
00:01:59.800You know, it's interesting as you tell the story or the analogy of the library and then the stacks and the books that you might not be allowed to read.
00:02:08.200One story you have told is as a young man, I think in law school, somebody gave you a copy of a book by Thomas Sowell.
00:02:16.040And you started to read it and threw it in the trash and said, if I remember right, that no black man can think this way.
00:02:21.880Yeah, that was Black Education, Myths and Tragedies, I think, one of his early books, and he laughs about it.
00:02:30.240Then, of course, he sent me a copy just to make sure I had it.
00:02:34.140But then, after law school, I was working in Jeff City.
00:06:14.840And there was another gentleman that you don't know that's also passed away, like Walter, who was also very quiet but a libertarian and was very, very helpful.
00:06:32.940But anyway, the whole point is that in Jefferson City, again, I go back to what I said at the very beginning, that things that initially seem like a negative, you know, you can't get a job, so you wind up in Jefferson City, turn out to be a blessing.
00:06:53.000And what I say in retrospect is that God closed all the doors that I should not have gone through and left one door open, my Hobson's choice.
00:07:02.940And it turned out to be the best job I've ever had.
00:07:05.860All right, let me take a quick second.
00:07:07.200I want to talk to you about how you can get involved right now to help the people in Israel.
00:07:11.840And the rising anti-Semitism that's happening not only in the U.S., but around the world every day.
00:07:17.340And the Jewish people continue to pay the price.
00:07:20.200From growing threats against Jewish communities, to acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation.
00:07:25.600Many Jewish families are living with fear simply because they are Jewish.
00:07:29.660Synagogues, schools, and community centers continue strengthening security
00:07:33.040as hatred spreads far beyond the headlines.
00:07:35.980And that's why the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews
00:07:39.120is working every day in Israel and around the world,
00:10:20.980I had just made my first trip to California.
00:10:24.040You got the inkling that there was going to be something on you when they sent a photographer to take a picture.
00:10:29.180I was sharing an office with three other staffers, and this photographer shows up from the post.
00:10:34.720And December 16, 1980, there's my smiling face on the op-ed page.
00:10:40.940And then my whole life changed, and the attacks, the negativity.
00:10:46.620And there is a nastiness as a black conservative that I don't think anyone else experiences.
00:10:55.120You get some of it as an Hispanic who's a conservative because I'm not supposed to be a conservative, but you're really not supposed to be a conservative.
00:11:01.820And there's – part of the reason I wanted to write the book is the vitriol that has been directed at you is different.
00:11:09.660Look, Justice Scalia, you knew him extremely well.
00:11:14.140He was a brilliant, extraordinarily principled.
00:11:16.620he never had the kind of hate directed to him that you did and and and the left
00:11:23.140they view you a black man is not allowed to think that way you you're a traitor for it and that
00:11:30.460there's an ugliness to that yeah well i mean that's you know i grew up i'm again i've been
00:11:37.040fortunate to have had misfortunes and one of the things you learned during segregation is there was
00:11:43.240this idea that boy don't you know your place yep and that's the same thing i mean the these are the
00:11:49.440same some of the worst people that you would meet like the progressives uh that's why i mentioned
00:11:55.520people like woodrow wilson you know one of the uh early progressives uh who was who was a vicious
00:12:03.220racist yeah and but see underneath that and paul johnson makes the point that you scratch the
00:12:09.000surface of things like the Marxists and the socialists, that's what you find because they
00:12:14.420have to categorize people. So I understand that. But I crossed that bridge in my early 30s
00:12:22.000that I accepted that this is the way they were going to treat me. This is what was going to
00:12:28.800happen. This is what would happen. And who knew where it would leave, but God would take care of
00:12:36.760that part. But the fact that they have all this vitriol, to me, is a white flag that they have
00:12:45.040no argument. When you start calling... If they think you're wrong, persuade you.
00:12:50.040Look, I'm open to reason, but I will not be told what to do. No one cajoles me. No one
00:12:57.740makes me do anything. Slavery is over. But there's this sense that don't you know what you're
00:13:07.600supposed to think? And that is with me, that is the wrong argument.
00:13:12.060Well, and related to that, one of the things that you have really powerfully written and
00:13:17.780spoken about is with affirmative action and racial quotas, it brings with it a stigma.
00:13:25.820You rather famously put a sticker of 15 cents on your Yale law degree from a cigar box because – and you talked about coming out of Yale but not being able to get a job.
00:13:39.760And look, I went to school at a different time than you did, but I'll tell you, as an Hispanic, I still remember this one supercilious liberal in law school explaining that everyone who wasn't a white man was on the law review because of affirmative action.
00:13:56.680That was the only reason anyone could possibly do well is because they were giving us this gift, and it was infuriating.
00:14:05.240You know, I've heard, I've been, there are many, many slights along the way.
00:14:53.500Just pause for a second and think about the marvel of America, that your grandfather who raised you was raised by his grandmother who was a freed slave, and now you are the second longest serving Supreme Court justice in American history and in a couple of years will be the longest serving.
00:15:16.380That is – it's one of the things – look, those who point to the flaws in our nation's history, they're not wrong.
00:15:27.300Our racial history in particular, it has been a history of injustice and slavery was grotesque.
00:15:33.040But I agree with Dr. King that the arc of history is long and it bends towards justice.
00:15:39.660And that journey was possible because of the principles America was built on, even if it took us decades and even centuries to begin living up to it.
00:15:51.360Well, you know, he always – my grandfather would talk about don't throw out the Ten Commandments because people don't obey them.
00:16:00.620There's nothing wrong with the Ten Commandments.
00:16:03.040It's just we have weaknesses or for whatever reasons we don't comply.
00:16:08.520And I think sometimes when you're angry and you see suffering and difficulties, you are willing to throw everything out, the baby with the bath water.
00:16:20.020And as you get older, you can be more discerning.
00:16:24.820And one of the things I think that's unfortunate is that the people who should know better haven't stood up and defended those principles and asserted them and then tried to live up to them and not be hypocritical and not to sacrifice the principles for a share of the power or for a share of the loot that they're getting from the country or whatever.
00:16:48.200And so one of the things that I tried to do when I was teasing out the speech at the University of Texas is to make this point.
00:16:58.020Two things that I wanted to talk about was the fact that here you had uneducated people who believed that God made them equal.
00:17:09.420And you had Irish nuns, immigrants, that believed strongly that in God's eyes we're all equal.
00:17:24.360It was not, no matter what the laws around us said, this was not debatable.
00:17:30.260So now that means if they're Irish immigrants and uneducated people who have no formal education believe this, my point was simply that it must be self-evident.
00:18:46.660Do you really believe as a church what you said you believe?
00:18:51.280And it was the gap between that, what you said, the church said, and what the leadership seemed to a 19-year-old to believe.
00:19:01.580And I think in this country now, think about it.
00:19:05.460When last have you had a leader that said something that is the equivalent of I pledge my life, my property, my fortune, and my sacred honor?
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00:19:37.600canadian restaurants excluding quebec why should you listen to armstrong and getty on demand
00:19:42.380we're not boring a lot of news is boring and tedious and depressing and makes you angry you
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00:20:22.400and nobody cares i think giving the downtrodden money enables them they aren't getting the money
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00:20:39.120so you referenced the the speech you gave at university of texas i want to commend all the
00:20:45.160the listeners here, go and listen to that speech. It really was an extraordinary speech. I'm proud
00:20:49.680of UT. I spent a couple of years on the faculty as an adjunct law professor there. And look,
00:20:56.400most law schools are so left-wing. I'm proud of UT for inviting you there. The president,
00:21:00.580Jim Davis, is a good friend, had you there. But it really is an important speech and conversation.
00:21:07.400And if folks haven't listened to it, they should. What I want to do in the interest of time,
00:21:12.280There are additional chapters in your life from being a Hill staffer to an assistant secretary of the Department of Education to the chairman of the EOC and the Reagan administration to a court of appeals judge on the D.C. Circuit to going through one of, if not the most brutal confirmation hearing of any justice.
00:21:34.780You and Brett Kavanaugh can arm wrestle for who had the rougher time, but in many ways you're – and I talk about this in the book, how what Justice Kavanaugh went through was a replay of the playbook that you were subjected to.
00:21:48.200I want to skip over all of those periods, although I recount them in detail in the book.
00:21:55.980And I want to go to after you are confirmed and you're sworn in and you're in your early 40s and suddenly you're a Supreme Court justice.
00:22:09.440And your autobiography ends with your being a justice.
00:22:13.340So it tells your life story, but then does not cover your jurisprudence.
00:22:19.460I want to start with just a human thing.
00:22:20.960What's it like the first day you're a justice?
00:22:24.480You walk in, like just what's day one of being a Supreme Court justice?
00:23:52.720And I must say, I'm on the other side of that spectrum now.
00:23:58.380But I was treated royally, fabulously by my new colleagues.
00:24:03.360Your old boss, Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, Stevens, O'Connor, a great woman who doesn't get the credit she deserves, Justice Kennedy.
00:24:15.340And now I'm on the other side of it where I have newer colleagues, wonderful and brilliant young people like Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh you mentioned.
00:25:22.280It's the World War II. Byron White. They were just wonderful people. They were very kind to me. The courts changed a bit now since the Dobbs leak. Back then, there was a trust.
00:26:01.240And now we're in—it's a different generation now.
00:26:05.500But the point is that you have equally good people who are there.
00:26:10.260I mean, I loved, I knew some of them as law clerks, but they've become very dear friends.
00:26:15.640And I hope to be a model to them as the older members of the court who were there when I arrived were to me.
00:26:23.420So of all the justices who have served on the court, I think you are the most willing to reconsider precedent and to think of an issue anew, which is in some ways to think about it as it was – in fact, in many ways to think of it as it was originally understood.
00:26:43.360And that – your opinion writing is – you write straightforward opinions in ordinary English.
00:26:57.320You don't tend to use fancy highfalutin words, but your opinions are written so that the regular person can read them and understand what you're saying.
00:27:06.940And I think there's a workmanship quality to your opinions.
00:27:13.160I analogize it to a farmer or someone building a home that you – and you draw that same analogy.
00:27:22.000Why do you think it is that you are the most willing to reconsider precedent?
00:27:27.640You know, I start with something you and I, I think, have talked about over the years, and that is that I start with something that has to make sense.
00:27:38.120The quote from your grandfather, if it don't make no damn sense, it don't make no damn sense.
00:27:42.280Yeah, and I keep that in my office because the – you can – he would call some of these professors fast-talking.
00:27:56.800You know, we have had throughout history court intellectuals who can make all sorts of justifications for things and theories and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:28:07.120And I've been blessed because I can sort through the theories and I read lots and lots and lots of books.
00:28:39.300Or you can have inductive, which any rancher or farmer uses, which is you do something and it's experience and you keep generalizing up to something more general.
00:28:57.740And if he has said, boy, that don't make no sense.
00:29:00.700You know, he should be a – when I go out to ordinary people, they should be able to understand their constitution.
00:29:07.880And by the way, ordinary people, one thing people may not know, you do that a lot.
00:29:12.160You and Jenny go out in your RV, like in the summertime, you head across the country and are in Walmart parking lots just hanging out with regular people.
00:30:46.400That we've taken something that was passionately achieved and that was believed in passionately, and we turned it into this thing that you need an oracle to explain.
00:30:58.560Yeah, the Federalist Papers were newspaper editorials.
00:31:01.300And they were only in New York, by the way.
00:31:03.240And those were basically Hamilton and those guys.
00:31:08.200There's a big difference between Hamilton and some of the more radical guys, like a Sam Adams, which is more than a beer, by the way.
00:31:16.400I will admit there was an amusing exchange of one commentator on the left who was on TV saying, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, can you imagine those people overthrowing the government?
00:31:35.060And I couldn't help but respond, yes, yes, I can.
00:31:46.400One of the things you have been really eloquent on and I think profoundly influential on is the – look, the Constitution is the foundational document that created our government.
00:32:03.320But you have focused a great deal on the Declaration of Independence.
00:32:07.460And why is the Declaration so important and what is the relevance that people should know about it?
00:32:17.120Well, the Constitution sets up the government, the form of the government.
00:33:31.060And that's what I was interested in, that what establishes this whole notion of liberty?
00:33:37.460What establishes this order of rights?
00:33:40.340And so it matters if you think the government is the primary giver or grantor of rights and you receive rights and benefits from the government versus you have the rights and the government receives its authority from you.
00:34:02.080And I think that that order, being able to establish that in each case is important.
00:34:09.920And that's, if you go back, and that explains Justice Scalia's writings on the structure of the Constitution being the safeguard of these rights that you have that are antecedent and that are transcended.
00:34:24.860So I focus on that to always get the order right.
00:34:29.420When you farm, every farmer knows, like when you plant or when you plow, I don't know if you've ever plowed.
00:34:37.720I'm a city boy, so I've watched it on TV.
00:34:40.760So my granddaddy said, boy, he would always say, and he put a little cuss word in there from time.
00:34:47.280He said, and those rows better be straight.
00:34:50.120So you have to take your first row, and it has to be absolutely straight.
00:34:54.380Then you put your tire in a groove where the plows, especially if you're using a dish plow, and they go different ways, you go and you follow that.
00:35:04.600So now every subsequent row is straight.
00:35:07.960Well, going back to your point about precedent, what if that first row is crooked?
00:35:14.100Would you keep going, pretending that it's straight, or do you go back and make it straight?
00:35:20.800That's why you say, well, I'm not accepting precedent.
00:35:23.480But if something doesn't make any sense, I can't – what am I going to do?
00:35:27.120Am I a fool for following that or not questioning it?
00:35:30.600And where does – I taught a course on stare decisis just for this point.
00:35:35.180It makes sense when you have this unwritten laws and when you have traditions and when barons are like ruling on cases in these rural areas in England.
00:35:46.200But when you have positive law, when it's written down and you can see the deviation, who's the fool?
00:35:54.820Why would you follow something that's absurd?
00:35:57.300Well, look, a great example of that, and a case I talk about quite a bit in the book, is the Kelo case, where Kelo involved a city that was condemning a woman's home.
00:36:12.160There's a tiny house, regular person's house, not a mansion, and for a public purpose, not a public use.
00:36:23.220And that started in southwest D.C., by the way, the precedent for that.
00:36:28.300And the court was willing to say that the public purpose was the equivalent of public use.
00:36:34.360Well, a public purpose could be to increase your tax base.
00:36:37.520Well, and actually as I was driving over here to do this, I wanted to – look, I pulled up the language of the Fifth Amendment and the relevant prohibition at the end of it is, nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.
00:36:58.020So that's the actual language. And Kilo, unfortunately, it was 5-4, the majority said that the city of New London, Connecticut could take her home, not for a highway or a road or a city building, but for a parking lot for a planned Pfizer building.
00:37:21.040And you dissented, you dissented, and it focused on the words public use versus purpose.
00:38:06.980A public purpose doesn't necessarily – is much, much broader.
00:38:12.280So just imagine you have a somewhat blighted area, but suddenly it's attractive to people with lots of money.
00:38:21.120And a city decides, well, we'd like to increase our tax base.
00:38:28.060Well, there are all these young people with lots of money who want to build these McMansions or these high-end $2 million or $3 million structures.
00:38:38.120Well, the public purpose would be to increase that tax base.
00:38:44.500And now you've given people who have authority to take your property a much broader way and much more power to take an individual's property.
00:38:58.360I took quite a bit of property at Yale for this reason.
00:39:01.280If you go back to Georgia, if you go back to the South, you go to places like South Carolina, there was all this land that blacks owned in the way that my family received land over the years.
00:39:19.840Well, a lot of that land was, there was aggressive effort, there were aggressive efforts to take, to use that land for developments.
00:39:32.640It could be for resorts in Hilton Head.
00:39:35.560It could be for strategic purposes in Harris Neck, Georgia.
00:39:40.220It could be for conservation in places where blacks were subsistence farmers, like in McIntosh, Georgia.
00:39:48.720So my only point is simply this, that the word – if you want to protect the property, you have to stick to the words in the Constitution or it sort of spreads out to broader powers that were not intended and public purpose allows it.
00:40:07.800Plus that word appears no place in the Constitution.
00:40:09.940Well, I will say even though you were in dissent, you did not command the majority in the court, I think over time the view you articulated has prevailed, and it's persuaded Texas and many other states have enacted laws to prevent the taking of public property for public purposes.
00:40:28.020And it was inspired by your very – Justice O'Connor used an effective analogy and dissent in that case where she said under this reasoning, the government could condemn every Motel 6 to build a Ritz-Carlton.
00:41:49.880And I think you see throughout the founding all those things that they – those were always paired, liberty and property.
00:41:59.500And we treat it as though it's a benefit from the government rather than a right that transcends the government and is to be protected from the government.
00:42:09.540One thing you did there just a minute ago that is really powerful and that is a consistent theme of your jurisprudence is you understand the rights protected in the Constitution with an understanding of the context of history.
00:42:28.140So when you're talking about condemning land or property for public purpose rather than use, you quickly brought it to when government power is used, historically it has been used over and over by the rich and powerful against the more vulnerable in society, often against African-Americans or Hispanics or people who don't necessarily have the ability to defend themselves against government power.
00:42:56.240that's something also that you've powerfully done in the second amendment context uh and and one of
00:43:04.980the things that that you've said you and i when we were sitting down doing interviews you you
00:43:09.360talked about the importance of reconstruction that if you're going to understand american
00:43:13.440history in the constitution you got to understand reconstruction tell us about that well it's
00:44:13.420But the 14th Amendment is passed, and the whole point is to now make these slave citizens.
00:44:23.260But there's something further going on.
00:44:25.520If you look at the debates in the 14th Amendment, the argument is these people have a right to defend themselves.
00:44:32.360Now, the radical Republicans felt that with these rights, privileges or immunities, also brings the right to bear arms, okay?
00:44:45.520They have a right to defend themselves from these marauders.
00:44:50.880And anyone who lives in a rural area, who lives in the south, it could be in Texas, in rural Texas, everybody is armed for a variety of reasons, to defend themselves, to hunt, et cetera.
00:45:04.760And if you live in rural Georgia, I didn't know anybody who didn't have at least one weapon.
00:45:54.220And defining them, of course, answering Taney and responding to his notion that blacks cannot
00:46:02.620be citizens, but this also brings in the Privileges of Immunities Clause.
00:46:07.980And Taney was the author of Dred Scott, which if there's a decision that is more disgraceful
00:46:13.420than Plessy versus Ferguson, it was Dred Scott.
00:46:15.840Well, it is – for a lot of different reasons.
00:46:21.440I've spent a lot of time on Dred Scott and the history around Dred Scott.
00:46:26.980But the whole point is that he – here's a man who's trying to figure out a way to say that no way blacks could ever be citizens of this country just by their very nature.
00:46:40.560And, of course, we revisit that old notion in the birthright case last term, but in a different way and for different reasons.
00:46:49.980But the 14th Amendment in this country is critical because it's basically the second founding.
00:46:58.020So what I think I owe my fellow citizens is not just to read the words of the Constitution, but to try to understand not just the 14th Amendment, but the revolution, leading up to the revolution, the history of England, the things that influence it, the Civil War, the post-Civil War, the Reconstruction era.
00:47:20.140And you may have to read people you don't necessarily agree with.
00:47:23.600For example, I read and reread Eric Foner on Reconstruction.
00:47:27.840Now, he's a revisionist historian, but he's fine.
00:47:30.700He does a great job of explaining Reconstruction and a lot of these problems, and I admire the work that he's done.
00:47:37.280At the same time, you may not agree with the revolutionary period with Murray Rothbard because he's a libertarian, but he's written a couple of thousand pages on this and conceived in liberty.
00:47:52.860And it's worth reading because it gives you that sort of granular understanding of the revolutionary period.
00:48:00.780But you told me a story about Justice Breyer when he was robbed.
00:50:31.180It's different now because I'm the oldest member as opposed to the youngest.
00:50:35.780As the New York Times said, the youngest and the cruelest.
00:50:40.120But, you know, it's just I've just changed perspective.
00:50:43.300But still, it's a human institution with decent people on board.
00:50:46.980So I saw Brett and Ashley at Lindsey Graham's funeral, and they've been friends. I've known them for 30 years. Ashley was on the 2000 George W. Bush campaign with Heidi and me, so we were all young staffers on that campaign.
00:51:01.780So I saw the two of them at Lindsay's funeral. I actually told Brett at the funeral a story during his confirmation hearing when Lindsay Graham went off. And I think it's his – Lindsay was a dear friend of mine and it was his finest moment, I believe, as a senator where he unloaded on the unfairness of what was happening.
00:51:24.660And my mother had not previously been a fan of Lindsey Graham's.
00:51:31.240And in the hearing, she texts me and she says, okay, I now love Lindsey Graham.
00:51:38.940And she goes online and gives him 40 bucks.
00:51:41.200And so I walk over to Lindsey, I pull out my phone and I show him the text from my mom.
00:51:57.560And as I said to you from the beginning, I do not understand a lot about this town.
00:52:03.240I don't know who has the time for all this animus toward other people.
00:52:07.680I don't spend any of my day on that sort of thing.
00:52:10.280But the lying that takes place, the attacks on financial disclosure, which was laughable in one way, but just painful to just the lies.
00:52:23.020But you and Mike Lee and the others who stood up are dearly appreciated because we could not believe the inundation of just misstatements and falsehoods.
00:52:39.820And we don't have the capacity at the court to defend ourselves.
00:52:44.220We don't have a bully pulpit or anything like that.
00:52:47.300Most of us just simply are doing our jobs.
00:52:50.500And we can disagree, you know, in the old days, I think I first became aware of the court when they're riding along U.S. 17 between Savannah and the farm.
00:53:07.440There were these impeach Earl Warren signs after Brown v. Board of Education.
00:53:12.600And so I understand that people have different ways of reacting to the work that we do.
00:53:22.100But this current environment that we're in is quite, excuse me, quite different from signs saying impeach Earl Warren.
00:53:33.640Thank you for – you've been incredibly generous with your time.
00:53:36.660Thank you for joining us on this podcast.
00:53:38.200Thank you for spending the time in the interviews to write this book.
00:53:43.960And look, I've said this before, but you are a true American hero.
00:53:47.660And I want to say to the folks listening, if you're a young person, there are a lot of young people that listen to this podcast.
00:53:53.420If you are a young person and you're looking for someone to admire, someone to emulate, someone to walk along a path and be inspired by, you would be very hard-pressed to find a better role model than Clarence Thomas.
00:54:10.300And that's why I wrote this book, because I think you are an incredibly historically significant human being and leader with courage and principle, and I am grateful.
00:54:25.300You can order the book, goingfurther.com.