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The Judging of Clarence Thomas
| Article
# : |
18800 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1991 |
1,957 Words |
| Author
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W.B. Allen
W.B. Allen is professor of government at Harvey Mudd College
in Claremont, California. He is also a member of the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights. |
The blow fell upon Clarence Thomas with unexpected fury. Out of a dimly remembered past, one woman's fury kindled into a consuming fire that branded him. Barring some dramatic recanting or unveiling, Anita Hill has so wedded herself to Justice Thomas that he can never hope to leave the Court for other public service without reliving the nightmare of the last days of his confirmation hearings.
Hill's revenge can only excite wonder as to what inspired it. That question is not answered by the public allegations, which seem a fabric of pirated and invented charges, but perhaps by an animus born of disappointed expectations. That the very eligible Chairman Thomas of the EEOC passed up the very eligible Miss Hill, and for a white woman at that, may well provide all the motivation one needs to unravel this sordid tale.
It seemed that the confirmation hearings when Judge Robert Bork was nominated to the Supreme Court had set the unsurpassable benchmark for bitterness and invective; and then the Thomas hearings occurred. And the last days of the Thomas hearing eclipsed the drama of their first stage, which had already spawned doubts about the proceedings of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Now Americans cannot raise the serious and fundamental questions concerning the overall process without first separating the events of the last days sufficiently to permit a more liberal perspective on the process itself.
A tangled web of motivations and practices--some apparent, some yet obscure--complicates the analysis of this event. Anita Hill in all probability concealed the exact nature of her relationship with and regard for Clarence Thomas. That conclusion, however, does not unveil this mystery, for it is still more probable that she was but a tool in the hands of senators whose motivations are to the extent far more important than her own.
Key to the Mystery
Hill's relationship to those senators is the real key to this mystery. For if she perjured herself before the Judiciary Committee, one or more of them surely suborned her. Even the insistence on her appearing "involuntarily" serves to underscore their relationship, inasmuch as it protects Hill against being made a scapegoat by implicating them in any wrongdoing by her. The arrangement smells like a mutual guarantee against ratting, since one cannot fall without the other also falling.
We can discern
...
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