Judge Nominee Says He Will Be Objective

Federal appeals court nominee Clarence Thomas told Senate Democrats on Tuesday that his conservative personal and political views would not shape his decisions on the bench.

“My approach will be to put my personal views in the background,” Thomas told the Senate Judiciary Committee. He pledged to rigidly follow the law as written by the Democrat-controlled Congress, even when he disagreed with the wisdom of the legislation.

This was exactly what committee Democrats wanted to hear, and they were restrained in their questioning of the 41-year-old Thomas.

“You picked the right job to audition for,” Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said.

If Thomas is confirmed, which now seems likely, he will be seen in legal circles as the most prominent black federal judge, next to 81-year-old Justice Thurgood Marshall. The committee is expected to vote on Thomas in late February.

Thomas gained attention by sharply criticizing liberal civil rights policies such as affirmative action after President Ronald Reagan named him chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1982.

Those issues were muted Tuesday, however, as Republicans and Democrats took turns pointing to Thomas’ life as a success story of the post-civil rights era.

Thomas was born into an impoverished home in the segregated South and was brought up by his grandparents. He was educated in Catholic schools, won a scholarship to Holy Cross College and then went to Yale Law School.

His experience convinced him, Thomas said, that hard work and individual effort, not government help, made for success.

But, on Tuesday, in addition to lauding his grandparents and the nuns for making him a success, he praised the nation’s civil rights laws.

“But for the civil rights laws, I would not be sitting here. I would be somewhere in Georgia, possibly in Pinpoint,” the tiny fishing community near Savannah where Thomas grew up.

During the hearing, representatives of the elderly and women testified against the nominee, accusing him of lax enforcement of the anti-discrimination laws during his eight years at the EEOC.