The Other Black Justice on the Supreme Court
A standout moment in American history occurred in the head-to-head clash between Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as they each expressed disdain for the other’s opinion in this term’s major affirmative-action decision.
But it was not a one-on-one contest.
There was another Black voice echoing throughout the Supreme Court that day, the only other Black justice in the history of the Court: Thurgood Marshall.
His opinions are still alive, three decades after his death. It was his argument for affirmative action’s constitutionality nearly 50 years ago that set the foundation for all subsequent legal debate on the issue.
In my five decades as a journalist, I’ve had the privilege of speaking with both Marshall and Thomas about their philosophies of law and how the law should address racial inequality, and a biography I wrote, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, is now celebrating its 25th year. I hear Marshall’s voice resounding in the two dissenting opinions in this summer’s affirmative-action decision, one from Jackson and the other from the only Latina Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor.
[Linda Greenhouse: The court Ketanji Brown Jackson knew]
Jackson and Sotomayor built their opinions on Marshall’s position—that affirmative action is a compelling national interest, necessary to fostering a successful, racially diverse society. Marshall that racial preferences for minorities were legally permissible on the grounds that the Constitution previously granted preferences to the white majority while leaving
