The Nine [58]
Thomas never identified his enemies by name—the “smart-aleck commentators and self-professed know-it-alls,” as he once described them—but it was usually clear whom he meant. The list began, of course, with the senators who opposed his confirmation. Thomas also regarded most of the press as part of the elite, and a friend quoted him as saying the happiest day of his life was when he canceled his subscription to the Washington Post. Likewise, Thomas detested Yale Law School, his alma mater, and he had a “Yale Sucks” bumper sticker on the mantel of his chambers for a time. He believed that he was treated paternalistically while he was on campus and that the school abandoned him (in favor of another Yale law graduate, Anita Hill) during his confirmation hearings. Sneering references to Yale were a standard part of his speeches. As Thomas put it in a talk for Headway magazine, a now-defunct conservative publication, in 1998, “I couldn’t get a job out of Yale Law School. That’s how much good it did me. I think I’ll send the degree back, while I’m at it.” Six years later, as the commencement speaker at Ave Maria School of Law, a new institution grounded in Catholic legal principles, he accepted an honorary degree with the quip, “As the rift from my alma mater remains, I will need a degree from a law school.” Thomas frequently did moot courts and commencement addresses at small law schools and Catholic and evangelical colleges, but he never returned to Yale. For speaking engagements, he described his rule as “I don’t do Ivies.”
It was possible to interpret Thomas’s refusal to ask questions at oral argument as a sign of simmering resentment. Even as recently as the 1980s, such silence might have drawn little attention because several justices of that era—among them Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun—asked relatively few questions. But the Court in the 1990s featured eight active interrogators, making the contrast all the greater. In his public appearances, Thomas was often asked about his reluctance to participate. His answers varied. Sometimes he said he asked questions only if other justices had not covered the subject of interest to him. Other times, he said he gained more from listening than he did by speaking. In private, he would sometimes express frustration with his colleagues for interrupting too much and showing off. In 2000, Thomas explained his silence to a student group by saying that as a youth he was self-conscious about speaking Gullah, a regional dialect of coastal Georgia, and so he “developed the habit of listening.” This last explanation was especially peculiar. It is possible that Thomas spoke some Gullah when he lived in Pin Point, Georgia. But from the age of six, Thomas lived with his English-speaking grandfather in Savannah, where Gullah was rarely spoken, and attended rigorous parochial schools, where he spoke only English and received excellent grades.
One reason Thomas maintained his silence may simply be because the media called so much attention to it—and he wasn’t going to give his critics the satisfaction of seeing him change his ways. Among friends, he would mock the way the liberal press described justices who moved to the left as “evolving” and “growing” on the Court. “I ain’t evolvin’,” he would say.
In public, Thomas would discuss over and over again the way anger has shaped his life. At a commencement speech in 1996