Томас, Кларенс цитаты

Кларенс Томас — американский юрист, судья Верховного суда США с 1991 года. Является вторым афроамериканцем в Верховном суде. Считается самым консервативным судьей Верховного суда США за последние десятилетия.

Поскольку его отец рано бросил семью, был воспитан матерью и дедом. В молодости участвовал в протестах чернокожих студентов против расовой дискриминации. Окончил Колледж Святого Креста в Вустере и школу права при Йельском университете.

С 1974 по 1977 год работал в офисе Генерального прокурора штата Миссури, с 1979 по 1981 год был помощником сенатора Джона Денфорта. В 1981 году стал помощником министра образования США по правам человека, а в 1982 году был назначен президентом председателем Комиссии по вопросам равенства в сфере занятости.

В 1990 году президент Джордж Буш назначил его судьёй Апелляционного суда округа Колумбия. Известен жёсткими взглядами на целый ряд вопросов, в том числе поддерживает применение смертной казни к умственно отсталым, совершившим тяжкие преступления. Wikipedia  

✵ 23. Июнь 1948
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Томас, Кларенс: Цитаты на английском языке

“I agree with Ralph Ellison when he asked, perhaps rhetorically, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro, of Negro life, never bothered to learn how varied it really is.”

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Контексте: I agree with Ralph Ellison when he asked, perhaps rhetorically, why is it that so many of those who would tell us the meaning of Negro, of Negro life, never bothered to learn how varied it really is. That is particularly true of many whites who have elevated condescension to an art form by advancing a monolithic view of blacks in much the same way that the mythic, disgusting image of the lazy, dumb black was advanced by open, rather than disguised, bigots.

“I come to state that I'm a man, free to think for myself and do as I please.”

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Контексте: I have come here today not in anger or to anger, though my mere presence has been sufficient, obviously, to anger some. Nor have I come to defend my views, but rather to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me as though I was an intellectual slave because I'm black. I come to state that I'm a man, free to think for myself and do as I please.

“Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The framers created our constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty”

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s
Контексте: The Court's decision today is at odds not only with the constitution, but with the principles upon which our Nation was built. Since well before 1787, liberty has been understood as freedom from government action, not entitlement to government benefits. The framers created our constitution to preserve that understanding of liberty. Yet the majority invokes our Constitution in the name of a 'liberty' that the framers would not have recognized, to the detriment of the liberty they sought to protect. Along the way, it rejects the idea—captured in our Declaration of Independence—that human dignity is innate and suggests instead that it comes from the Government. This distortion of our Constitution not only ignores the text, it inverts the relationship between the individual and the state in our Republic. I cannot agree with it.

“Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law”

Concurring in Adarand v. Pena, 515 U.S. 200 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=U10252&friend=oyez (1995).
1990s
Контексте: [I disagree] that there is a racial paternalism exception to the principle of equal protection. I believe that there is a 'moral [and] constitutional equivalence,' between laws designed to subjugate a race and those that distribute benefits on the basis of race in order to foster some current notion of equality. Government cannot make us equal; it can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law.

“I am a man, a black man, an American.”

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Контексте: Despite some of the nonsense that has been said about me by those who should know better, and so much nonsense, or some of which subtracts from the sum total of human knowledge, despite this all, I am a man, a black man, an American. And my history is not unlike that of many blacks from the deep South. And in many ways it is not that much different from that of many other Americans.

“One opinion that is trotted out for propaganda, for the propaganda parade, is my dissent in Hudson vs. McMillian. The conclusion reached by the long arms of the critics is that I supported the beating of prisoners in that case. Well, one must either be illiterate or fraught with malice to reach that conclusion. Though one can disagree with my dissent, and certainly the majority of the court disagreed, no honest reading can reach such a conclusion. Indeed, we took the case to decide the quite narrow issue, whether a prisoner's rights were violated under the 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause of the Eighth Amendment as a result of a single incident of force by the prison guards which did not cause a significant injury. In the first section of my dissent, I stated the following: 'In my view, a use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a prisoner may be immoral; it may be tortuous; it may be criminal, and it may even be remediable under other provisions of the Federal Constitution. But it is not cruel and unusual punishment.' Obviously, beating prisoners is bad. But we did not take the case to answer this larger moral question or a larger legal question of remedies under other statutes or provisions of the Constitution. How one can extrapolate these larger conclusions from the narrow question before the court is beyond me, unless, of course, there's a special segregated mode of analysis.”

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)