Thomas Confirmation Hearings

THOMAS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

THOMAS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS. On 28 June 1991, Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court, sent his resignation to President George H. W. Bush. Three days later, the president nominated Clarence Thomas, another African American, to fill the vacancy. But while Marshall had been a leading liberal on the Court and a champion of minorities and the poor, Thomas held much more conservative views. Born into a poor Georgia family, he graduated from Yale Law School in 1974 and rose in Missouri legal and political circles until moving to Washington, D.C., with Senator John Danforth. Thomas headed the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1982 until

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1990, when President Bush named him to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

The earliest phase of the nomination hearings centered on Thomas's political, social, and judicial views, his critics inquiring particularly into his lukewarm attitudes toward affirmative action and other social programs aimed at minority groups. The nominee maintained a discreetly noncommittal attitude when questioned on such controversial matters as abortion. The Senate Judiciary Committee was evenly divided and, in late September, sent the nomination forward with no recommendation. Before the full Senate could act, however, an explosive new element was injected into the debate.

Anita Hill, a young African American law professor at the University of Oklahoma, alleged that while working for Thomas she had been harassed by him. She charged that Thomas repeatedly addressed crude and sexually explicit remarks to her and made persistent and unwanted sexual advances. Hill made her allegations in televised testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and much of the nation was transfixed by her dramatic charges and by Thomas's vehement and angry denial of every allegation (he called the proceedings "a high tech lynching"). Both principals were highly articulate and both seemed honest, but it was clear that one of them was not telling the truth. Proponents of Thomas felt that the Hill testimony was part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit a conservative. Opponents, on the other hand, believed that Hill's charges were convincing and damaging and that the Judiciary Committee (made up entirely of white males) was insensitive at best and harshly aggressive toward Hill at worst—Senators Arlen Spector, Orrin Hatch, and Alan Simpson came in for particular criticism because of their overtly hostile attitude toward Hill.

On 15 October 1991, the full Senate voted to confirm Thomas by a vote of 52–48, the narrowest confirmation vote of the twentieth century. Thomas took the oath of office on 23 October. One of the results of the hearings was a heightened consciousness of the problem of sexual harassment and a greater willingness on the part of many women to reveal their own experiences and, in some instances, to bring formal charges.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Danforth, John. Resurrection: The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas. New York: Viking, 1994.

Hill, Anita. Speaking Truth to Power. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

Mayer, Jane, and Jill Abramson. Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.

United States Senate. Nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States: Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary. 4 volumes. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1991.

David W. Levy

See also Confirmation by the Senate .