Some recent commentary on public health has referred to health care as a right. And, perhaps that's what prompted Justice Clarence Thomas to come out of his shell and question the very concept of "rights." Presumably, he's sensitive because some people seem to expect that, as an African American, he'd be more focused on rights and the failure to respect them than he is.

At least that seems to be what prompted him, this past March, at an event honoring the Bill of Rights to suggest:

“Today there is much focus on our rights,” .... “Indeed, I think there is a proliferation of rights.”

“I am often surprised by the virtual nobility that seems to be accorded those with grievances,” he said. “Shouldn’t there at least be equal time for our Bill of Obligations and our Bill of Responsibilities?”

And I quite agree. But, I suspect that the Justice has a slightly different perspective on the relationship between rights and obligations than I do. He probably thinks that rights have to be earned--i.e. they aren't entitlements that come with being human, but arrive as a reward for individuals meeting their social obligations. Which would explain, among other things, why in his universe children and aliens (resident and non-resident) don't have any rights, as his most recent sole dissent in Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding demonstrates. It's his equation of rights and obligations with rewards and punishments that keeps him from recognizing that one man's right actually is the basis for another's obligation--a give and take relationship which can't be severed without destroying the very fabric of our existence as social organisms.

What it all boils down to is prejudice--the preconceptions one brings to an issue--and prejudice is something which the Justice, perhaps because he equates prejudice with antagonism towards particular individuals of which he has no personal experience, can't be objective about. He can't recognize his own prejudice towards a punishment/reward world view simply because he's not prejudiced. He's been rewarded for his good behavior and having met all obligations and has no reason not to think that's how it works for everyone. So, he's amazed that the aggrieved, those who complain about rights denied, aren't simply sent on their way.

Justice Thomas is apparently entirely self-centered. So self-centered that he routinely declines to share the basis or content of judgments with his colleagues, making the dissent in Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding somewhat anomalous. According to the Washington Post report:

Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. "Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment," he wrote.

He said administrators were only being logical in searching the girl. "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," he wrote. "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."

Since it is difficult to see the relationship between a female student secreting a few headache pills in her bra and the maintenance of "quiet and order in the school environment," it seems fair to conclude that maintaining order is not only the first priority of school authorities, but that their obligation to respect individual privacy doesn't even enter into his calculations. Nor does he question the appropriateness of declaring personal property contraband in the first place. If children have no rights that they have earned, then both those enumerated in the Bill of Rights (which should really be called a bill of state obligations, if we wanted to avoid confusion), including the right to private property, as well as the un-enumerated human rights, including the right to privacy, need not even be considered.

But, really, what we have in Justice Thomas is a judge who doesn't consider himself qualified to make decisions. The wisdom of Solomon he has not.