Clarence Thomas
Thomas Allen
Mark Paoletta writes an excellent article about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: “What Makes Clarence Thomas Great,” Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, June 2026, pages 12–15 (https://chroniclesmagazine.org/view/what-makes-clarence-thomas-great/#comment-63457). He presents Thomas as a strict constructionist, i.e., he interprets the Constitution literally and narrowly, limits the federal government’s powers to those explicitly and clearly granted in the text, and declares that all powers not expressly enumerated in the Constitution are reserved to the States or the people unless the Constitution expressly denies such powers.
According to the article, Thomas claims that the Constitution is color-blind. He errs; it is not. White men wrote it for Whites and only for Whites. The Preamble tells us so. (“We the People of the United States . . . to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Who are “ourselves” and “our posterity”? They are the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution and their descendants, all of whom are Whites.) Also, the author, Charles Pinckney, of Article IV, Section 2, Paragraph 1 of the US Constitution (“the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States”), said, “At the time I drew that Constitution, I perfectly knew that there did not then exist such a thing in the Union as a black or colored citizen, nor could I then have conceived it possible such a thing could ever have existed. . . .” (For proof that the Constitution was written for Whites, see “For Whom Is the Constitution Written?,” “Addendum to ‘For Whom Is the Constitution Written?’,” and “The Constitution of 1788 Was Only for White People” by Thomas Allen.)
If the Constitution were color blind, the Fourteenth Amendment, which was illegally and unlawfully ratified, would not be needed except to disenfranchise Southerners. Moreover, the Congress that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment also adopted a segregated school system for the District of Columbia. Obviously, this amendment was not intended to require school integration. That is why the Supreme Court based its school desegregation decision more on sociology and foreign policy than on the Constitution. (For more on the Fourteenth Amendment, see “Founding Principles of the Governance of the United States,” “Addendum to ‘For Whom Is the Constitution Written?’,” and “Before and After” by Thomas Allen.) The constitutional rulings in Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal) and Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation) should have held that education is a State matter; the Constitution grants the federal government no authority over public education, except in the District of Columbia and the territories.
Moreover, if Thomas were a strict constructionist, he would not apply the first nine amendments, the Bill of Rights, of the Constitution to the States. Through the incorporation doctrine, the Supreme Court applies most of the Bill of Rights to the States via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Since the incorporation doctrine was not discovered until about a generation and a half after the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, obviously, the drafters and ratifiers of this amendment did not intend for it to be used to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. (The constitutions of each State have their own bill of rights.) Since Thomas applies the incorporation doctrine, he is an inconsistent strict constructionist.
In District of Columbia v. Heller (the Second Amendment confers an individual right), Thomas, who supported the ruling, acted as a strict constructionist because the ruling applied to an agency of Congress but not to the States. However, in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Thomas, who supported the ruling, applied the Second Amendment to the States, which was contrary to strict construction. These rulings illustrate Thomas’ inconsistency as a strict constructionist.
Furthermore, when he rules against federal laws that discriminate against Whites, he is a strict constructionist. When he rules against State laws on segregation, integration, or discrimination, he is not a strict constructionist. Such issues are reserved for the States or the people thereof under the Tenth Amendment. For the most part, Thomas, unlike most other Supreme Court Justices, is a strict constructionist.
Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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