Judge Clarence Thomas Blames Legal Ignorance of Average American for Erosions of Rights: “You protect your liberty”
Opinion by Jon Skolnik, Salon, 6/28/22
EDITORIAL: This is why we tell people that “if you don’t know what your rights are, you don’t have any”. Likewise, since those rights are documented in the Constitution, then you have to read it to learn what your rights are.
NOTE that HE DID NOT say, as indicated in the above link, that legal ignorance was the cause of the SUPREME COURTS loss of rights, but of LOSS OF RIGHTS generally. The above link is deceptive on this point.
Justice Thomas’ comments are consistent with comments by Neil Gorsuch during his confirmation hearings about the need to teach Americans CIVICS. The public schools don’t teach this anymore.
Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said that Americans are “more interested in their iPhones than their Constitution,” according to a recently released book.
“I think we as citizens have lost interest and that’s been my disappointment,” Thomas said in an interview. “That certainly was something that bothered Justice Scalia, that people tend to be more interested in their iPhones than their Constitution. They’re interested in what they want rather than what is right as a country.”
The justice’s remarks were featured in “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” a book written by Michael Pack and Mark Paoletta, who interviewed Thomas for more than 30 hours between November 2017 and March 2018. In the book, Thomas argued that America’s alleged lack of interest in the Constitution might lead to a loss of personal liberty.
“You protect your liberty. It’s your country. [The Supreme Court is] one part of the effort, and it is the obligation of the citizens to at least know what their liberties are and to be informed,” he said.
“I think we are allowing ourselves to be ruled when we turn all that over to someone else and we’re saying, ‘Rule me.’ Does it mean we get to make all the decisions? No,” Thomas continued. “We have a system for doing that, but a part of that is our role in it, and our informed role in it, not what is said on TV, not what is said by some half-informed person.”