Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has urged Americans to mark the 250th anniversary of independence by standing up for their beliefs, emphasising that the US Constitution serves as a common foundation in a deeply divided society. Speaking at a judicial conference near Miami, Thomas said: 'We can disagree on all sorts of things, but we’ve got to have something in common or we don’t have a country.'
Thomas, the second longest-serving justice in Supreme Court history, reflected on his upbringing in the segregated South and his more than three decades on the high court. He gave no indication of retiring soon, citing Justice Thurgood Marshall's advice: 'You take a job for life, you do it for life.'
The justice addressed the cynicism pervading society and contributing to distrust in government. He invoked his grandfather, the son of a freed slave with little formal education, to describe his judicial philosophy of limited government. 'One of the rods in this society versus so many others is that we were taught from the cradle that we were equal in God’s eyes, that was self-evident,' Thomas said.
His remarks came in response to an interview with former clerk Kasdin Mitchell, recently nominated by President Donald Trump to the federal bench in Dallas. Thomas noted that figures like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and Abraham Lincoln all spoke of 'transcendent rights beyond the ability of man to take away.'
