Betty Winston Bayé: New Power Center: Wives Of Supreme Court Justices.
New power center: wives of Supreme Court justices
By Betty Winston Bayé
If asked, many people probably would say that Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama are the two most powerful women in Washington today — for obvious reasons. Pelosi is speaker of the House, and Michelle Obama, by tradition, holds a bully pulpit of her own as the First Lady. Though each clearly has power, it's only temporary. Pelosi's colleagues can vote her out of the Democratic leadership, and her constituents can vote her out of office period. A first lady, at best, can only be first lady for eight years.
So, really, who are the most powerful women in Washington?
Well, some of the most powerful women in Washington, though they do not regularly show up on the nightly news, and though most Americans may not even know their names, belong to Washington's select and permanent elite. These powerful women are the spouses of justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their menfolk are not elected, but if they survive the grueling and politically charged Senate confirmation process, they never again are required to explain to anyone, except possibly their wives, why they choose to vote this way or that on supreme matters of life, liberty and the rule of law.
Justices enjoy lifetime appointments which neither age nor physical or mental infirmity can strip them of. So, they are not obliged to be mindful of what the electorate may be clamoring for or even how the president who nominated them would wish for them to rule. Indeed, long after presidents and even members of Congress who voted up or down on their appointments have gone to the grave or disappeared from public life, the justices sit and decide. And over the years, the Supreme Court justices have used their power to make mischief or to do great good, depending on your politics.
Though Congress can act to impeach a Supreme Court justice, that has rarely happened.
Collectively and individually, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have awesome power. For example, it was in the 1800s that through separate rulings, the high court ruled itself to be the “supreme arbiter” of the Constitution, decided that it had the power to nullify acts of other branches of government, and declared that Congress is not empowered to limit the cases which the high court may choose to hear or not hear.
But even in this era of power couples, tongues are wagging about how the wife of the least talkative, and one of the most conservative Supreme Court justices, has been out on the hustings pumping gas into the so-called “Tea Party” movement — for which Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has said she's become “a bit of an ambassador.”
Ginni Thomas has been a political operative for years, even before she married Clarence Thomas. It's also no secret that the first President George Bush wanted Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court precisely because of his expectation, which turns out to have been right, that he would be the anti-Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, who cut his teeth in civil rights litigation, was the first African-American Supreme Court justice.
But now, Ginni Thomas is shaking up the political establishment by having recently founded the nonprofit and presumably nonpartisan Liberty Central Inc. to organize, lobby and accept unlimited tax-deductible contributions to educate “informed American patriots” who share Liberty Central's agenda of fighting “for liberty against the liberal Washington agenda.”
“We've got to get the Constitution back to a place where it means something,” Ginni Thomas says.
It's no surprise that Justice Thomas is being mum about his wife's political activities, and about whether he shares concerns that his wife's active lobbying and fundraising from donors, whose names may not have to be made public, might compromise his work on the nation's highest court.
Clearly, we've come a distance from the days when it was widely accepted in political circles, and elsewhere, that men led and women followed.
Who can say what influence Ginni Thomas exerts over her husband's decisions on the Court?
But it doesn't matter because there's apparently nothing on the books that would preclude the spouse of a lifetime-appointed judge from being as politically active as she or he wishes her to be.
Thus is begged a key question: Should the occasion ever arise that the Supreme Court takes a case that involves the client organizations or donors of a justice's spouse, would the justice — in this specific instance, Justice Clarence Thomas — feel obliged to recuse himself, citing a possible conflict of interest?
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
By Betty Winston Bayé
If asked, many people probably would say that Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama are the two most powerful women in Washington today — for obvious reasons. Pelosi is speaker of the House, and Michelle Obama, by tradition, holds a bully pulpit of her own as the First Lady. Though each clearly has power, it's only temporary. Pelosi's colleagues can vote her out of the Democratic leadership, and her constituents can vote her out of office period. A first lady, at best, can only be first lady for eight years.
So, really, who are the most powerful women in Washington?
Well, some of the most powerful women in Washington, though they do not regularly show up on the nightly news, and though most Americans may not even know their names, belong to Washington's select and permanent elite. These powerful women are the spouses of justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Their menfolk are not elected, but if they survive the grueling and politically charged Senate confirmation process, they never again are required to explain to anyone, except possibly their wives, why they choose to vote this way or that on supreme matters of life, liberty and the rule of law.
Justices enjoy lifetime appointments which neither age nor physical or mental infirmity can strip them of. So, they are not obliged to be mindful of what the electorate may be clamoring for or even how the president who nominated them would wish for them to rule. Indeed, long after presidents and even members of Congress who voted up or down on their appointments have gone to the grave or disappeared from public life, the justices sit and decide. And over the years, the Supreme Court justices have used their power to make mischief or to do great good, depending on your politics.
Though Congress can act to impeach a Supreme Court justice, that has rarely happened.
Collectively and individually, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have awesome power. For example, it was in the 1800s that through separate rulings, the high court ruled itself to be the “supreme arbiter” of the Constitution, decided that it had the power to nullify acts of other branches of government, and declared that Congress is not empowered to limit the cases which the high court may choose to hear or not hear.
But even in this era of power couples, tongues are wagging about how the wife of the least talkative, and one of the most conservative Supreme Court justices, has been out on the hustings pumping gas into the so-called “Tea Party” movement — for which Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has said she's become “a bit of an ambassador.”
Ginni Thomas has been a political operative for years, even before she married Clarence Thomas. It's also no secret that the first President George Bush wanted Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court precisely because of his expectation, which turns out to have been right, that he would be the anti-Thurgood Marshall. Marshall, who cut his teeth in civil rights litigation, was the first African-American Supreme Court justice.
But now, Ginni Thomas is shaking up the political establishment by having recently founded the nonprofit and presumably nonpartisan Liberty Central Inc. to organize, lobby and accept unlimited tax-deductible contributions to educate “informed American patriots” who share Liberty Central's agenda of fighting “for liberty against the liberal Washington agenda.”
“We've got to get the Constitution back to a place where it means something,” Ginni Thomas says.
It's no surprise that Justice Thomas is being mum about his wife's political activities, and about whether he shares concerns that his wife's active lobbying and fundraising from donors, whose names may not have to be made public, might compromise his work on the nation's highest court.
Clearly, we've come a distance from the days when it was widely accepted in political circles, and elsewhere, that men led and women followed.
Who can say what influence Ginni Thomas exerts over her husband's decisions on the Court?
But it doesn't matter because there's apparently nothing on the books that would preclude the spouse of a lifetime-appointed judge from being as politically active as she or he wishes her to be.
Thus is begged a key question: Should the occasion ever arise that the Supreme Court takes a case that involves the client organizations or donors of a justice's spouse, would the justice — in this specific instance, Justice Clarence Thomas — feel obliged to recuse himself, citing a possible conflict of interest?
Betty Winston Bayé's column appears Thursdays in the Community Forum and online at www.courier-journal.com/opinion. Her e-mail address is bbaye@courier-journal.com.
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