RSSClarence Thomas May Be The Smartest Person On Supreme Court
J.J. Jackson | June 26, 2009
For years I have said that Justice Clarence Thomas is perhaps one of the finest legal minds in the world. Sure, I have disagreed with him at times on what I think are clear cut errors on his part, but by enlarge he is right on and his opinions are intelligent unlike those of some other Justices by the names of Ginsberg, Souter, Kennedy, etc. And he has shown it again in a case that you have to be careful with not to overreact to based on what you think at first.
The case involves the searching of Savana Redding. Ms. Redding was suspected by her school have having contraband (in this case prescription or over the counter medication) in her possession. She was searched and when no contraband was originally found, the school officials went further performing a strip search. The report:
The Supreme Court ruled today that Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they subjected her to a strip search on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear.
The court ruled 8-1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.
Justice David H. Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.
What was missing, Souter wrote, “was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” Souter wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented. “Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment,” Thomas wrote.
The ultimate reasoning for the finding was that the act of the strip search went too far and was excessively intrusive. Now, let’s overlook the obvious constitutional implications of telling someone that they are not allowed to have medication in their possession to treat a condition they might have. Although I would say that such an issue is tenuous at best and could not be seen as being by any stretch of the imagination Constitutional. But we have to put that aside since that is not what was being decided.
Also let us overlook whether or not the initial search was unconstitutional based on a loose allegation without any supporting evidence to support it as evidenced by the ultimate fact that no contraband was ever found. So we have to ignore that major Constitutional question too.
Now we come to the actual issue at hand. IF the school has the right (and I don’t believe they do) to set this standard and IF the search was Constitutional (and I don’t believe it was) and that IF the standard of proof was high enough (and I do not believe it was) to conduct the search then how could a complete search of her person be wrong?
Recapping once more:
Assuming the school is allowed to ban these items and assuming that it is Constitutional to search her under the belief that she is in violation then how is the actual and ultimate result of the search such? The answer is it cannot be and Thomas also brought up the obvious results of this ruling.
Making all these asinine assumptions to get to the point where the search is legal (and it wasn’t in my opinion), Thomas simply points out the obvious. “It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place should thought no one would look,” Justice Thomas correctly wrote concerning the case and the assumption that the claim she had contraband was true. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments. Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”
Like I said, the smartest person on the court.
Of course this logic has drawn sharp criticism from the foaming at the mouth left whose understanding of logic and argument amounts to shouting down those that they disagree with and blowing air horns to disrupt intelligent conversations. So you sort of expect that.
I repeat, IF the school ban is legal and IF being legal it is ok to search students based on loosely contrived tips then it must be legal to fully search said students to determine if they indeed have the items in question. To tell someone where they can put something to avoid it being found as the majority did in this case is completely asinine. But that is why people that think otherwise have a problem with such simple logic.
Now I will say that all of Justice Thomas’ opinion is not well reasoned. He did find the search to be legal in his dissent and how is anyone’s guess. I suppose such would be possible if you agree that schools have the right to tell students they cannot have medications in their possession. But he still exhibited more thought than any of the other eight Justices on the court with the rest of his writing. It is just sad that he got something so simple right but failed to understand slightly less complicated ones.
The standard of proof before such actions are taken must be much higher before harassing students who maintain their constitutional rights even while in school. But at least his opinion contains continuity whereas those justices that said the search was legal but essentially went too far fail such a test. Either the search is legal or it is not. It can’t only be legal up to an arbitrary point. And Thomas is dead on on that.
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