The best way to describe what it's like to be a Supreme Court Justice is that a Supreme Court Justice can do whatever he damned well pleases, except that he must do it by the end of June, when the Court has to finish its work for the year and everyone runs off to their summer homes, teaches at fancy law schools or writes their memoirs.

It's well-known that Clarence Thomas is writing his memoirs and that a publishing house has given him a huge advance. As a general rule, you don't give Supreme Court Justices a lot of money for their memoirs, because they do not become best-sellers and most people reading them are lawyers and academics, not enough to justify a huge advance since, let's face it, when it comes to selling books, the Supreme Court is not John Grisham.

But Clarence Thomas is different. Back in 1991, when Thurgood Marshall retired from the Supreme Court after 24 years of service, the first President Bush announced that Clarence Thomas would be appointed to replace him. This shocked everyone. Marshall was a civil rights legend, whose lawyering helpend end racial discrimination in the public schools. Marshall was already worthy of a portrait on Mount Rushmore by the time he became a Supreme Court Justice in 1967, but almost no one knew who Clarence Thomas was in 1991, when he stood next to George H.W. Bush on that summer day in Kennebunkport, Maine, looking a little frazzled when Bush told the world that Thomas was the most qualified person for the Supreme Court.

Everyone acknowledges that this announcement -- that Clarence Thomas was the most qualified person for the Court -- was not true. It was the byproduct of a Washington D.C. culture where politicians say whatever comes to mind and overstate their case for seemingly no reason at all. What bothered everyone in this instance, though, was that Thomas was replacing Marshall, the legend. It also bothered everyone that (1) Thomas was only 43 years old; (2) Thomas appeared to be extremely conservative, having worked in the Reagan administration for eight years and (3) had no clear vision about the Constitution. For a lifetime appointment on a Court that interprets the true meaning of the Constitution for posterity, nominating a guy like this is like agreeing to marry someone on a blind date.

Then things got more interesting. After Thomas appeared before the U.S. Senate to answer questions about his constitutional philosophy (and gave the usual conservative responses without revealing much of anything about his views on the law), a lawyer who used to work for Thomas came forward and announced that Thomas had sexually harassed her and made her life miserable. Anita Hill testified about this as the nation watched in astonishment. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Most of us hadn't even heard of sexual harassment, but Hill's testimony seemed to provide a good primer on the subject. When she finished her testimony, Thomas got back before the Senate and proclaimed that this was a "high tech lynching" and that the sexual harassment charge was full of lies.

Nobody knew what to do. It was a classic "he said she said" scenario. Do you believe Anita, or do you believe Clarence? Someone was lying. In the end, the U.S. Senate gave Clarence Thomas the benefit of the doubt and confirmed his nomination by a vote of 52-48.

You can imagine the conversation at the publishing house when Thomas was given the huge advance for his autobiography. Clarence Thomas probably told the men with the money that he would talk about his impoverished childhood, his conservative bootstrap-philosophy, his provocative views on what ails America and a few choice anecdotes about his flirt with radical black separatism as a college student in the late 1960's. And the men with the money probably said, "That's fine Clarence, but you'd better say something about Anita Hill and sexual harassment." This is because sex sells and in many ways, that dispute over whether Clarence sexually harassed Anita triggered the culture wars that remain with us today.

As we speak, Thomas is probably drafting his autobiography. The lazy days of summer may be upon us, but not for Clarence. He's got to finish that book. I wouldn't mind reading about Anita Hill and untangling his explanation of those events. From what I have read about Clarence Thomas over the years, he remains bitter about the confirmation battle and still holds grudges about how Democrats and liberals tried to destroy him with these sexual harassment charges out of left field. But I also wouldn't mind reading about a trait that makes him unique among the more than 100 people who have served on the Supreme Court: almost total disregard for case precedent and his single-minded determination to re-write legal theories in the most provocative and remarkable way possible. The may not be as exciting as sexual harassment, but it's a little more important.

This week, the Supreme Court decided a case brought by a high school student against his former school district which punished him for posting a large banner that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." The Court ruled against the student, finding a way to fit the case into existing precedent which generally gives students the right to express themselves at school so long as their behavior does not disrupt the school or interfere with the educational mission. I have written about the case here and here, but, in summary, the Court said that the banner was perceived as pro-drug and therefore inconsistent with the school's mission.

This was not good enough for Clarence Thomas. He is known for staking out his own claim in Supreme Court decisions. He will agree with the end result of a Court ruling so long as it cuts against the claims of a civil rights plaintiff, but then he will write up an opinion of his own suggesting the wholesale reconsideration of decades of case precedent. His formula for this is as follows: if the framers of the Constitution in 1787 did not recognize certain freedoms, then they could not have envisioned the Constitution as embracing those freedoms. This is called "originalism" or "original intent" legal reasoning.

Conservatives like originalism because it remains the most simplistic way of solving otherwise complicated legal problems. Prisoners are complaining about their conditions of confinement? Can't sue under the Constitution's "Cruel and Inhuman Punishment" clause because prisoners in the 18th Century were treated like animals! Want to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty? Sorry, the framers of the Constitution had the death penalty for all sorts of crimes. See? Originalism is easy.

Few judges and scholars believe in originalism, though. There has to be some consideration of the modern world in reading and interpreting the Constitution. Times are changing, and so is the Constitution, even if it has been amended 27 times. For this reason, even conservative judges reject originalism as a means to interpret the Constitution. Not Clarence Thomas. In the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case, he wrote a particularly astonishing opinion (which no one else on the Court signed onto) stating that students in public schools should not have any free speech rights whatsoever, because that's the way that it was in 18th and 19th Century America.

Here were Thomas's main points (word for word):

1. During the colonial era, private schools and tutors offered the only educational opportunities for children, and teachers managed classrooms with an iron hand. Early public schools were not places for freewheeling debates or exploration of competing ideas. Teachers instilled these values not only by presenting ideas but also through strict discipline. Schools punished students for behavior the school considered disrespectful or wrong. Rules of etiquette were enforced, and courteous behavior was demanded. To meet their educational objectives, schools required absolute obedience.

2. In light of the history of American public education, it cannot seriously be suggested that the First Amendment “freedom of speech” encompasses a student’s right to speak in public schools. Early public schools gave total control to teachers, who expected obedience and respect from students. And courts routinely deferred to schools’ authority to make rules and to discipline students for violating those rules.

3. “Once a society that generally respected the authority of teachers, deferred to their judgment, and trusted them to act in the best interest of school children, we now accept defiance, disrespect, and disorder as daily occurrences in many of our public schools.” We need look no further than this case for an example: Frederick asserts a constitutional right to utter at a school event what is either “[g]ibberish,” or an open call to use illegal drugs. To elevate such impertinence to the status of constitutional protection would be farcical and would indeed be to “surrender control of the American public school system to public school students.”

So, in Clarence Thomas's world, students were seen and not heard in the 1800's, and that's the way it should be now under the First Amendment. If the framers of the Constitution did not view student speech rights as a legitimate constitutional issue, then the current Supreme Court shouldn't, either. Students should sit in hermetically sealed rooms with strict teachers slapping students on the knuckles with their rules, learning reading, writing and 'rithmetic, and God help any student who expresses and opinion or speaks up for any reason.

No one else on the Supreme Court agrees with Clarence Thomas's views on this. Thank God. I have never seen this kind of analysis in a Supreme Court opinion: wipe out all free speech rights for a class of citizens? What kind of rigid mind would endorse this view of the First Amendment? How are students going to view the world when their grade school experience consisted of sitting quietly without a peep?

I'll say this: when the world opens up Thomas's autobiography and flips straight to the chapter on Anita Hill and sexual harassment, I'm going to look elsewhere in the book for any kind of justification for this tortured and oppressive legal reasoning, and why, exactly, he did not tell the American public back during his confirmation hearings that he saw that world this way.