Judge Edith Jones introduces Justice Thomas for the Inaugural Gregory S. Coleman Memorial Lecture #FedSocEvents 
2/ Greg Coleman clerked for Judge Jones and Justice Thomas
3/ Judge Jones: 20% of Trump nominees to federal courts of appeals have been J. Thomas law clerks. #SCOTUS
5/ Justice Thomas: "I consider Judge Jones a judicial hero, a heroine if you want to be gender-normative." #SCOTUS
6/ Justice Thomas: "Judge Jones has the courage to make the hard decisions that your reasoning leads you to. And she has done that. It doesn't make you popular."
7/ "The Greenhouse Effect: You were more concerned about what would be said about you by Linda Greenhouse, than making the right decision. Courage is very important."
8/ Justice Thomas repeats remarks from Judge Jones's eulogy of Greg Coleman: "All of the superlatives that have been said about Greg were true. How many of us could say that."
9/ Justice Thomas: Greg Coleman was honorable, and had a decency, kindness, and honesty, a quiet tenacity, an unassuming conscientiousness and courageousness.
10/ Justice Thomas: The north star of federalism and the separation of powers is individual liberty. How, then does the administrative state compromise individual liberty? And then courts defer to those agencies under Chevron or Auer. They are like independent royal courts.
11/ Justice Thomas: We were deferring to positions by agencies in briefs before the courts. What kind of review is that? There's no there there.
12/ Leonard Leo: Magna Carta was in Washington.
Justice Thomas: Because you brought it there.
Justice Thomas: Because you brought it there.
13/ Leo: What influenced your legal philosophy?
J. Thomas: Segregation. When the gov tells you that you can't drink out of a water fountain, you can't go libraries. You begin to think about use and misuse of governmental power. That led me to reading Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged
J. Thomas: Segregation. When the gov tells you that you can't drink out of a water fountain, you can't go libraries. You begin to think about use and misuse of governmental power. That led me to reading Fountainhead & Atlas Shrugged
14/ J. Thomas: J Scalia and I "had a hoot. We had a blast."
Thomas told Scalia: I'll set the edge, and you'll run to the inside. My job was to make Scalia look moderate.
Thomas told Scalia: I'll set the edge, and you'll run to the inside. My job was to make Scalia look moderate.
15/ J. Thomas: "What exactly is stare decisis? Does it apply differently to unwritten Constitution and written Constitution. Stare decisis makes sense for unwritten legal tradition."
16/ J. Thomas: Backstone would be astonished that, with written law, we apply stare decisis the way we have, rather than referring back to written law.
17/ J. Thomas: Where does the power to issue nationwide junctions come from? Doesn't this encourage forum shopping? When you can localize effect to specific plaintiffs, where does a judge have jurisdiction beyond the parties?
18/ Justice Thomas: With stare decisis, we reflexively continue down a road, without slowing down and asking, what is the basis of this decision. I ask, where does this come from? "Evolving Standards of decency" and "Expectation of privacy." Where does this come from?
19/ J. Thomas: Recalls "expectation of privacy" was made up before oral argument, and made it into #SCOTUS jurisprudence. "It is not well thought out." Judges are obligated to do more than reflexively go along with these standards.
20/ Greg Coleman would always point out: "where does this come from?" and start from first principles.
21/ J. Thomas: Instead of saying stare decisis, we should say "quo waranto" (by what authority)? #SCOTUS
22/ I wrote a couple of the early "garbage" Dormant Commerce Clause opinions. Then I started thinking about "Where does this come from?" Then I say "I don't know where this comes from." I'm not evolving, I'm having second thoughts.
23/ J. Thomas: "What preserves our legitimacy, is we do our jobs honestly, ethically, with a moral foundation, live up to the oath we take, brick by break, we build a structure and fabric of society. Not one of us can build it up or tear it down ourselves."
24/ If judges can be honorable, we can leave the country in a better shape than we left it.
25/ J. Thomas: I tell my law clerks, they will leave job with clean hands, clear hearts, and clear confidences.
26/ J Thomas: if we had Greg Coleman's decency, work ethic, courage, we would be better off than all of this grandstanding on TV, and scoring points, and zaps here. What if Greg Coleman was Chairman of SJC. How would he treat Elena Kagan or Sonia Sotomayor. How decent would he be
27/ J. Thomas: I am a man of peace. My wife gets into trouble from time to time.
28/ FYI: C-SPAN cameras are in the back. This event should be broadcasted at some point.
29/ @farris_april awards Greg Coleman prize to Justice Thomas and Coleman family on behalf of @YetterColeman #FedSocEvents
30/ Here is the thread:
31/ @cspan has posted video of Justice Thomas's remarks at Texas @FedSoc Convention: c-span.org/video/?450905-…
