Thomas’ First High Court Term Brings Few Surprises : Law: Newest justice has lined up with conservatives, immersed himself in work, isolated himself from public.

For Clarence Thomas, it came as a total surprise--and this time it was a pleasant one.

Nearly 100 friends and colleagues gathered at the Supreme Court one afternoon in late June. Thomas entered the ornate reception room planning to attend a party for departing clerks only to learn that--surprise!--the crowd had gathered to celebrate his 44th birthday.

“It was so wonderful to see him with his old friends, the people who labored in the fields for him,” said Ricky Silberman, vice chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and one of many who fought for Thomas during his bruising confirmation battle. “He laughed and joked. It was like it never happened.”

While his old friends surprised him, he has not surprised them. During his first term, he allied himself with the court’s most conservative members: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia. He joined them last week in calling for the outright reversal of the ruling that made abortion legal and for allowing more religion in the public schools.

“To this point, he has been just what the conservatives hoped for and the liberals feared,” said USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky.

Since he took his seat in November, Thomas has immersed himself in the work of the court and isolated himself from the public. He avoids the Washington social scene and has turned down all speaking engagements. He has told friends that he refuses to read all newspapers or watch television news.

“He said one of the best days of his life was the day he canceled his subscription to the Washington Post,” Silberman said.

Another friend visiting Thomas in his chambers earlier this year commented on the loss of “Roots” author Alex Haley, who had died about two weeks earlier. Thomas reportedly looked startled. He didn’t know.

If there is a lingering unease over the sexual harassment charges that marred his confirmation hearings, it apparently has not affected his relationship with his fellow justices. “They have treated him like a member of the family,” one friend reported.

On the bench, Thomas has been notably silent. While the other justices have questioned attorneys in the court’s public sessions, the newest member of the tribunal mostly has listened and taken notes.

But he has been anything but muted when called upon to write opinions or dissents. In his writing, the newest justice has shown himself to be bold, provocative and decidedly conservative.

For example, when the justices on a 7-2 vote upheld an $800 judgment won by a Louisiana prison inmate who was held by guards and punched repeatedly in the mouth, Thomas dissented and said that the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” limits only the official sentences imposed on prisoners, not their treatment once in prison.

Thomas also proposed sharp limits on a defendant’s Sixth Amendment right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Traditionally, this has meant that an accuser must testify in court against the accused.

In a child molestation case from Illinois, Rehnquist said that there are occasional exceptions to this rule. For example, the police officer who interviewed the child soon after the incident could testify in her place, he said.

But Thomas said that the court should go further and declare that the Sixth Amendment does not actually give a defendant a right to confront his accuser in court. He reasoned that accusers who refuse to testify are not “witnesses against” the accused. Therefore, he maintained, the defendant’s rights are not violated if only third-party witnesses appear and offer “hearsay” testimony.

On the last day of the term, Thomas joined with Rehnquist, Scalia and Justice Byron R. White in declaring that the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling was “wrong” and should be overruled in its entirety. Last year, Thomas told senators that he had never discussed Roe and had not “made a decision one way or the other” about the issue.

“I was not surprised by anything I saw,” said Silberman, calling Thomas a thoughtful jurist who is guided by the principle of “judicial restraint.” According to this principle, decisions about matters such as abortion or school prayer should be made by elected state officials, not the courts.

“He is fiercely independent. And he has very strong opinions on the issues of the day,” said Clint Bolick, a longtime friend and an attorney for the conservative Institute for Justice. “Clarence Thomas listens to his own drummer and he is very happy to go it alone.”

His critics, however, see it differently.

“It is pretty clear he will be aligned with the right-wing element of the court,” said Georgetown law professor Louis M. Seidman. “He has also shown a real ideological edge this year. To put it mildly, I would say there is a lot of tension between his performance so far and what he told the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

At his confirmation hearing, Thomas said that he would bring no “ideology” to the court but rather would try to “strip down” any preconceptions so that he could approach each case as an impartial judge.

Although the new justice lined up in major cases with Scalia and Rehnquist, Thomas showed special concern in several instances over how rulings would affect African-Americans.

For example, the court in March reversed the death sentence given to a Delaware murderer named David Dawson because prosecutors told the jury about his membership in a white racist prison gang. On an 8-1 vote, with Thomas the lone dissenter, the court said that mere membership in a group cannot be used against a defendant.

Thomas argued that Dawson’s membership in a racist gang provided revealing information about his character.

In June, he questioned the wisdom of a court ruling forbidding defendants to take race into account in dismissing potential jurors, arguing that blacks and other minorities will be hurt most. When the court ordered Mississippi and other Southern states to do more to integrate their state universities, Thomas added a note urging preservation of the historically black colleges.

“It would be ironic, to say the least,” he wrote, “if the institutions that sustained blacks during segregation were themselves destroyed in an effort to combat its vestiges.”

His supporters point to decisions such as these to argue that Thomas will bring a unique perspective as the only justice to grow up poor and black.

During the summer recess, Thomas will not be teaching or traveling abroad like his colleagues. Instead, he will busy himself writing letters and moving into a new home farther outside the city of Washington. The farther, the better, he told several friends.

“He told me he wished the court met in Omaha, not Washington,” Bolick said.

In the weeks after his nationally televised confrontation with Oklahoma law professor Anita Faye Hill after she had accused him of sexual harassment, Thomas received nearly 10,000 letters of support, his friends say. And he intends to try to answer them all.

“He is very conscious of the value of the friends who stood by him. And he feels an enormous debt to mainstream America,” said Bolick. “And he will try to repay that debt.”