Tony Mauro has a new article in Legal Times that begins:
Justice Thomas Finds Himself in Inauguration Controversy
Tony Mauro
Legal Times
02-17-2005
A week before Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist swore in President George W. Bush to a second term as president last month, Justice Clarence Thomas presided over a little-noticed inauguration inside the Court building that has generated some controversy.
In an invitation-only ceremony, Thomas on Jan. 13 gave the oath of office to newly elected Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker. . . .
According to the article, the private swearing in of Justice Parker generated “some controversy” because Justice Paker is a protege of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, the so-called “Ten Commandments judge,” who defied the federal courts by refusing to comply with judicial orders to remove the Ten Commandments from the courthouse that hosts the Alabama Supreme Court. The controversial part about swearing in Parker, according to Mauro, is that the Supreme Court will be deciding cases this Term on the constitutionality of Ten Commandment displays. The article suggests that offering symbolic support to someone who is a close friend of someone closely associated with the public debate over issues relating to a pending case is problematic, even if the support was private.
This seemed like a pretty tenuous connection to me, so I re-read the article to find out who the people are that find this controversial. As best I can tell, the article’s only source for that view is a single man: Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. I think it’s fair to describe Lynn as a harsh and regular critic of Justice Thomas. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Lynn make a comment about Justice Thomas that wasn’t harshly critical. Maybe it has happened, but if it has it would be, well, pretty newsworthy.
Here’s my question: Is the fact that Barry Lynn objects to something Justice Thomas did itself worthy of a news story? Perhaps lots of people see the fact that Justice Thomas would swear in a protege of Roy Moore as controversial, and Mauro just chose Lynn to quote as representative of that view. Perhaps there is something else to this story that was cut out during the editing process. But the story as written seems to be about Barry Lynn’s objections, and only his objections. Maybe I’m missing something, but this story seems to be less about reporting on a controversy than trying to create one.
UDPATE: While it doesn’t have anything to do with Lynn’s rationale for criticizing Thomas, this important post over at Southern Appeal is more than enough to convince me that that Parker is someone Justice Thomas shouldn’t be supporting. Oddly, it may be that swearing in Parker should be controversial — just not for the reasons Mauro mentions in his article.
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