Leon Higgenbotham Jr. Quotes
Candidly, Justice Thomas, I do not believe that you were indeed the most competent person to be on the Supreme Court.
Leon Higgenbotham Jr., 1918-1998, Chief Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit, Letter to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, November 29, 1991
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
G. Harold Carswell was nominated to a vacancy on the Supreme Court by President Nixon. The nominee did not have a reputation as a distinguished jurist. Senator Hruska defended the nomination:
This was more than a general observation at the time. Elena Kagan had just gone through difficult and extended Senate confirmation hearings to be a Justice of the Supreme Court. She was confirmed but there was a substantial Conservative opposition to her on the grounds that she had not served as a judge, although she had appeared as an attorney in many cases and as Solicitor General of the United States she argued cases before the Supreme Court. To many it was surprising that a sitting justice would so currently take a public position which could be interpreted as criticizing one wing of Congress, especially since that wing had been criticized for just playing petty politics and having no real substantive issues.
From time to time, the assessment of a prospective Supreme Court justice has depended on an attempt to move the court in a particular direction or to prevent that. This is as opposed to the issue of the competence of the nominee. In most cases, such nominees may not have been the best qualified but they have been extremely competent. In a few cases, such as that of Justice Clarence Thomas, the justice was mediocre and inexperienced at best, but his virtues were his race and his total ideological consistency. Most attorneys can predict his vote in advance. He has never asked a question in oral arguments. See {623452} .
In America, the best attorneys have stayed in private practice where they could make much more money than government service or become professors and scholars of law. In either case, most have a track record that would make Senate confirmation difficult even if they wanted to be Federal Judges. A few like Abraham Lincoln went into politics. The Supreme Court is somewhat of an exception because of the power it wields, but even then many great attorneys have not been so inclined. Federal judges have usually been above average as attorneys, but not among the greatest.
Thomas was a Black, ultra-conservative Supreme Court justice. David Duke was a Louisiana politician who was a white supremacist and supported Nazi and Klu Klux Klan (KKK) positions and philosophy. He actually was a KKK member. See {624955} and {600279} as examples.
David Souter was an outstanding Supreme Court Justice—a lifelong Republican appointed by a Republican President. He did not vote the way Erickson thought he should. There was never any hint of any kind of sexual problem with Souter, and why Erickson chose to slander him with these descriptors is not known. One unproven theory is that some Souter votes and opinions upheld the First Amendment freedoms of pornographers and therefore by supporting these practices being promulgated, Erickson thought that he believed they were worthy themselves. Fortunately, Souter was so well thought off that only a few right wing extremists took these lies for what they were. What is important about this quotation is that Erickson did not lose any standing within the Conservative wing of the Republican party as a result of these rash slanders that were in themselves in terrible taste and crudely expressed. The Daily Telegraph of London put Erickson on its "List of Most Influential US Conservatives", giving him a rank of 69th most influential in 2007 and 65th in 2010. This crude lie was made in 2009. The Republican Party traditionally would never tolerate this kind of rhetoric but after the Southern Strategy, the party grew more and more extremist in its views and more and more vicious and unethical in its political methods.
