Judging Thomas

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In another case, Georgia v. McCollum, the court examined the constitutionality of excluding potential jurors on the basis of race. Though the practice was outlawed for prosecutors in 1986, defense attorneys continued to exercise this means of eliminating jurors who might be biased against their clients, whether black or white. The court voted 7 to 2 to ban these so-called peremptory challenges on racial grounds. Citing a 1991 precedent, Thomas voted with the majority. But in an opinion that read more like a dissent, he wrote: "I am certain that black criminal defendants will rue the day that this court ventured down this road that inexorably will lead to the elimination of peremptory strikes . . . Today's decision, while protecting jurors, leaves defendants with less means of protecting themselves."

The flip side of Thomas' courtroom activism is his almost cloistered personal life. Friends say the Anita Hill episode left him "shattered" and "guarded," leading him to shun public appearances. He is now instinctively so averse to the press, they say, that he's no longer much of a newspaper reader. "An experience like that leaves scars," says a friend. "Clarence and his wife have both had to go through a healing process."

Religion has been an important part of the process. Thomas, a onetime Catholic seminarian, and his wife Virginia regularly attend Sunday services at Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Va. Unlike the Scalias, and O'Connor and her husband, they are absent from the Washington social scene. Since he joined the court, Thomas has attended only two public events, a Horatio Alger Awards dinner and a state dinner at the White House. In May he canceled an appearance at New Jersey's Seton Hall law school after he was warned of a possible demonstration against him. Remembering her own embarrassment when she was booed during an appearance at New York University, O'Connor called Thomas to offer support.

Thomas doesn't have much time anymore for personal pleasures like reading Louis L'Amour novels and tooling around in his jet-black Corvette. His life revolves almost entirely around workdays at the court that can run from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. He is usually in bed by 8. On a court where the Justices communicate largely by memos, he is forging friendships with White and Rehnquist. His most frequent personal contact is with his clerks, reputed to be among the court's most conservative.

Most Justices say they need at least five years to settle fully into their role. Many have found their positions shifting during that transitional period: Nixon appointee Harry Blackmun, for example, drifted to the liberal end of the court, while Byron White, a Kennedy appointee, moved the other way. Don't look for any such lurch from Thomas. "My impression is that Thomas arrived on the court knowing where he belonged," says University of Virginia law professor A.E. Dick Howard.