US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas caused a major stir when he broke a nearly seven-year silence this week to crack a joke during oral arguments in a case before the highest court in the land.
Since 2006, the sole African American Supreme Court justice had stopped partaking in debates, saying that “when somebody’s talking, somebody ought to listen.”
The conservative 64-year-old justice made a snarky comment about whether one of the lawyers in a case about the competence of counsel in a Louisiana murder case should be considered qualified, as a Yale Law School graduate.
Thomas also went to Yale but has complained that he was admitted there thanks to an affirmative action program aimed at boosting the minority student population, rather than because of his merits alone.
“He did not have competent counsel then,” Thomas said of the defendant when Justice Antonin Scalia noted that the defense lawyer was a Yale Law School graduate, according to reporters who witnessed the exchange.
The barely audible comments were not included in full in the hearing’s transcript.
US Justice Clarence Thomas breaks 7-year silence
