Americans have long viewed the Supreme Court as more trustworthy and less nakedly political than other parts of the government. Or at least Americans used to feel that way.
In 2002, 50 percent of adults said that they had a lot of confidence in the court, according to Gallup’s annual polls on major institutions. Last year, in the most recent version of the poll, only 25 percent gave that answer. Other institutions have also become less trusted over the past two decades, but the court’s decline has been especially acute.
The Supreme Court is now less trusted than organized religion, organized labor or public schools, as this chart from my colleague Ashley Wu shows:
The debate over Justice Clarence Thomas’s acceptance of gifts from a wealthy Republican donor — and Thomas’s failure to disclose them — is in some ways a political Rorschach test. Many liberals who already disliked Thomas are angry. Many conservatives who consider Thomas to be a great justice think the controversy is overblown. And given that justices have lifetime tenure, that the Supreme Court has a habit of protecting its own, and that Congress (which has the power to remove justices) is gridlocked, I don’t expect that this episode will lead to any direct consequences for Thomas.
But it may have larger political consequences.
Thomas has engaged in a yearslong pattern of behaving in ways that other justices, and many elected politicians, do not. He has misled the public multiple times about his finances (accidentally, he has said). His wife, Virginia, a conservative activist, has also acted in ways that affect the court’s credibility. She attended the Jan. 6 rally protesting the 2020 election result and has repeated Donald Trump’s false claims about that election.
Outside legal experts aren’t the only ones worried about the court’s reputation these days. The justices are, too.
John Roberts, the chief justice, has publicly argued that the court is not part of the country’s “polarized political environment.” Amy Coney Barrett gave a speech in which she said that she and her colleagues were not “a bunch of partisan hacks.” Thomas himself has said that the justices don’t decide cases based on “personal preference.”
Thomas’s own behavior, however, has made it harder for the court to argue that it follows a loftier standard than either Congress or the executive branch does. Many officials in those branches probably would have suffered damage to their careers if they had repeatedly covered up — or failed to disclose — payments they had received.
You have to wonder how Thomas’s colleagues, including his fellow conservatives, feel about the continuing revelations.
In the rest of today’s newsletter, my colleague Lauren Jackson explains the situation, including the latest developments and less recent details.
Yacht trips
ProPublica has reported this month on two aspects of Thomas’s relationship with a real estate scion from Dallas named Harlan Crow, who has spent millions of dollars on Republican causes, including efforts to move the judiciary to the right. (Here is a Times profile of Crow, including details about an art collection that includes statues of dictators.)
For more than 20 years, Thomas has accepted luxury gifts and trips from Crow. The Los Angeles Times reported on the gifts in 2004. After that story, Thomas continued to accept gifts but stopped disclosing them in the public forms that Supreme Court justices file annually. More recent gifts remained unknown until ProPublica’s reporting.
Among them: Thomas has flown on Crow’s private jet and toured a volcanic Indonesian archipelago on his superyacht. Crow commissioned a portrait of himself and Thomas smoking cigars in Adirondack chairs. Crow also helped finance a documentary about Thomas and donated half a million dollars to Liberty Central, an advocacy group Virginia Thomas founded.
Thomas has responded by saying that Crow is one of his “dearest friends.” He has also said he was following colleagues’ advice when he declined to disclose the gifts.
Crow called the ProPublica report a “political hit job” by a group “funded by leftists.”
Missing transaction
The second set of revelations involve real estate that Crow bought from Thomas’s family. In 2014, Crow purchased the home where Thomas’s mother lives as well as two nearby vacant lots in Savannah, Ga., for $133,363. Thomas’s mother lives rent-free but is responsible for paying property taxes and insurance, CNN reported yesterday.
In a statement, Crow said he purchased the house, where Thomas spent part of his childhood, to preserve it for a future museum.
Thomas intends to amend his financial disclosure forms to reflect the 2014 deal.
It joins a list of other transactions that he failed to disclose or that remain mysterious:
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Thomas failed to report $686,589 in income that his wife earned over five years from the Heritage Foundation as well as two years of her income from Hillsdale College, a Christian school in Michigan. Thomas acknowledged the error when he amended his filings in 2011.
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He has reported between $50,000 and $100,000 in annual income from a real estate company and for years referred to it by an outdated name on disclosure forms, as The Washington Post reported this weekend.
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Thomas did not report reimbursement for teaching at the University of Kansas and the University of Georgia several years ago. After an outside group, Fix the Court, pointed out the lack of disclosure, Thomas amended his filing.
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From 1998 through 2003, Thomas accepted $42,200 in gifts, making him the top gift recipient on the court at the time. The justice who accepted the next-highest amount was Sandra Day O’Connor, who received $5,825 in gifts.
For more
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