Thomas: Founders Outran Modern Cowards

Justice Clarence Thomas says the people who signed the Declaration of Independence had something most of today's Washington figures don't: skin in the game.

Driving the news: Speaking Thursday at a judicial conference outside Miami for 11th Circuit judges and lawyers, Thomas reflected on shared national values, the court he joined in 1991, and why he thinks most Americans already understand constitutional rights better than lawyers do.

What they're saying:

"They put their names down and sealed their fate by signing — they faced the possibility that they could be hung for treason." — Justice Clarence Thomas, on the Declaration's signers

The contrast he drew was pointed: today's Washington figures "make promises and platitudes," but "when it's time to actually have courage... they fail or they find a reason or an excuse." The signers didn't have that option.

Between the lines: Thomas pushed back on the legal establishment's fondness for jargon. Originalism, textualism — he said those frameworks have "disenfranchised most people" by turning fundamental rights into a vocabulary test. His alternative framing: Americans were raised to understand they were equal in God's eyes and could own property. "Others may intrude upon those rights," he said, "but it was not theirs to take away." That's a natural-rights argument most gun owners would recognize immediately.

The court he misses: Thomas was unguarded about preferring the bench he joined over the one he sits on now. The early-90s court included veterans who'd lived through the Depression — justices who "thought the institution and the Constitution were much bigger than they were." He called those friendships "much, much deeper" than what exists today. Of the four most recent justices — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson — he noted he'd known all of them as law clerks while he was already sitting. "The relationships are different," he said, "even though they are not negative in any way."

Zoom in: On clerk hiring, Thomas said he's pulled from flagship state law schools in the 11th Circuit — Florida, Georgia, Alabama — and is bringing on a clerk who started at community college due to financial and family circumstances. "I like kids from regular backgrounds," he said. "Parents who worry about the mortgage and fixing the transmission on the car."

The bottom line: Thomas has been on the court since 1991 and is now its second-longest-serving justice. He sounds like a man who found his people early and never quite replaced them.