By Tara Ross

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is the jurist that liberals most love to hate. Well, actually, it’s far worse than that. They look down their noses at Thomas. They don’t respect him. Indeed, their attitude has been so condescending that many Americans now claim, as a matter of conventional wisdom, that Thomas lacks intellectual heft.

Only two years ago, then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told a National Public Radio audience that Clarence Thomas was unqualified to be Chief Justice. But his fellow justice, Antonin Scalia, would be “a little different question,” Reid stated, “I may not agree with some of his opinions, but I agree with the brilliance of his mind.” Reid apparently considered his statements so uncontroversial that he repeated the substance of them a few weeks later on Meet the Press. He told host Tim Russert, “[Thomas] has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written. I don’t—I just don’t think that he’s done a good job as a Supreme Court justice.” By contrast, Reid concluded, Scalia “is one smart guy.”

Such perceptions of Thomas are all too common among Americans. They believe him unqualified—a puppet doing the bidding of the more intellectually rigorous Scalia. Practically everything Thomas does, in the eyes of these biased observers, serves as additional proof that he is not up to the job. Fortunately, Jan Crawford Greenburg’s new book, Supreme Conflict, has arrived on bookshelves to set the record straight.

Supreme Conflict does not focus solely on the misperceptions about Thomas. The book is much broader, discussing the struggles for control of the Rehnquist Court. However, one important chapter reveals Thomas for the justice that he is: independent, sharp, articulate, principled, and courageous. Greenburg’s work is an important—and much needed—contribution to the effort to reeducate Americans about the work of this brilliant jurist.

For example, few would guess, from watching media headlines, that Thomas was prepared to be the lone dissenter on only the third case that came before him, Foucha v. Louisiana. During the justices’ private conference, as described by Greenburg, all nine justices agreed that the lower court was wrong. They were prepared to issue a unanimous opinion on behalf of Foucha, a prison inmate in Louisiana. But upon reflection, Thomas found that he could not go along with the other eight justices. He informed the Chief Justice that he was changing his vote, and he soon wrote a “sharply critical” dissenting opinion. Indeed, the opinion was so powerful that it changed the votes of three other, more senior justices. Rehnquist and Scalia decided to sign Thomas’s dissent. Kennedy didn’t sign Thomas’s dissenting opinion, but he changed his vote and wrote a dissent of his own.

Quite an accomplishment for a new justice—particularly a man who is supposedly intellectually weak and “an embarrassment to the Supreme Court.”

But Foucha was only the first of many cases in which Thomas displayed his independence and his willingness to stand on principle. Supreme Conflict reveals a man who constantly seeks the legally correct decision, not a politically popular one. During his second week on the bench, Thomas was again prepared to be the lone dissenter in a case, even though his opinion would be unpopular with the public. One of Thomas’s law clerks warned him that his dissent would be disliked. “But is it right?” Thomas asked, according to Greenburg. “Yes,” said the clerk. “Well, you can’t change it,” Thomas concluded.

Greenburg’s book describes the real Justice Clarence Thomas, a man that few people know. Again and again, she cites examples of cases in which he has displayed his independence, his thoughtfulness, and his zeal for upholding the law. The man that Greenburg describes is familiar to this author, who has studied and admired many of Thomas’s opinions. But the description will (sadly) be a new one for much of the American public.

Supreme Conflict is an easy read, even for those who don’t follow the ins and outs of every nuance of Supreme Court jurisprudence. The book is highly recommended. Americans have been led astray for much too long. It’s about time that someone introduced them to the real Clarence Thomas.

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