April 21, 2026
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1990. And, on July 1, 1991, Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States, and he was confirmed by the Senate on October 15, 1991.
Prior to that he earned his Juris Doctor degree in 1974 from Yale Law School. He was an assistant attorney general in Missouri, served as legislative assistant to U.S. Senator John Danforth, was Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan as Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
He is the longest-serving justice since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. And, since the death of former Justice Antonin Scalia, he is the Court's foremost originalist.
Originalist’s sensible approach is that the laws and the U.S. Constitution must be understood in terms of what they meant when they were enacted, not some modern interpretation that ignores their original meaning and purpose, and instead is interpreted as if the law or Constitution was just enacted.
Thomas, therefore, is a “judicial conservative,” which is not a political conservative, but one who adheres to the original meaning of laws and the Constitution, rather than applying liberal thinking to the process, which means a law or the Constitution can mean different things at different times.
Speaking last week at the University of Texas Austin School of Law, Thomas addressed what he identified as a critique of modern political trends. He said that America’s founding principles are under attack from ideological shifts in academia and government.
The values that are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence have “fallen out of favor,” and are under assault by progressives. "Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government," Thomas told the audience. This movement rejects the idea that rights come from God and instead places complete authority in government institutions, Thomas said.
Our founding documents assert the concept that all people are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights. The definition of unalienable (or inalienable) is that rights are fundamental, inherent entitlements that cannot be taken away, sold, or transferred, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And, Thomas noted that the Constitution was designed to limit government power, and to acknowledge and protect our liberties.
These documents protected Americans from centralized government authority and the majority controlling the minority. He cited principles — such as separation of powers and federalism — as safeguards against centralized authority and majority overreach, which are characteristics of many less-free nations.
History, he said, offers many lessons on the dangers of abandoning natural rights, where strong governments have suppressed those rights. Again, he noted that our system was intentionally designed to prevent this by restraining the government and empowering the citizenry.
But progressivism prefers the government to control everything, even the individual freedoms that the Constitution guarantees us, destroying those freedoms.
And history, Thomas said, is rife with examples of powerful governments suppressing individual freedoms, and the terrible results that followed.
He traces the roots of progressivism back about a hundred years, to early 20th-century, where figures such as President Woodrow Wilson advocated for a larger and more powerful federal government, drawing his inspiration from what had occurred in European nations.
Wilson also said that the Constitution should be read in light of changing conditions. But that is wrong. The Constitution must be read and understood as when it was first created. If changes are deserved, then they can be made through the established process, not simply by current justices who don’t like them, or don’t understand them, simply pretending they don’t exist.
And that also holds true for fundamental principles. Those principles cannot simply be ignored. They have been firmly established through due process. If there is good reason and ample support for changing them, then go through the established process to change them.
During this troubled time of the worst political division in decades, Thomas asked all Americans to rediscover the courage and conviction that our Founders possessed. "In my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration had so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs," he said.
That future has lasted in pretty stable form for nearly 250 years. But it has serious problems today, presented by those who do not understand our system, or who do not appreciate it.
It is interesting that as a unique system of government that has proven its worth for two and a half centuries, so many of those who live in this country and benefit from it, want to change it to something that has been proven to be a failed system over those same 250 years.
If the progressives are successful in their effort to subvert our constitutional republic, they may not live long enough to suffer the consequences of that subversion, as it will take some time to totally ruin the country. But their children and grandchildren most certainly will.
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