Abe and Clarence

In the wake of LBJ’s botched attempt to make him Chief Justice in 1968, Abe Fortas resigned form the Supreme Court on May 14, 1969. He was pressured not only by Richard Nixon and fellow crook Attorney General John Mitchell, but infuriatingly Earl Warren and (initially) Hugo Black. Black, who frankly should have resigned years earlier, to his credit figured out that calls for Fortas to resign were nakedly cynical and political and urged him not to. Warren didn’t recant, and given that he had known (and loathed) Nixon and Mitchell since Methuselah was in junior high it’s embarrassing that he didn’t know what the shot was until it was too late.

The pretext? Fortas has initially agreed to accept a $20,000 annual retainer from crooked financier Louis Wolfson. Not great, but he returned the first payment and did not accept any more, and there’s no evidence he did anything for Wolfson in exchange for the offer. Resigning over this was a mistake, particularly given that Nixon didn’t care at all about these penny-ante ethical violations and just wanted the seat, which inter alia ended up being used to de facto overrule Brown v. Board of Education.

Whatever you think of Fortas’s fateful decision, one thing we do know is that what Clarence Thomas has done is far, far, far worse: accepting services and luxuries worth huge sums of money from powerful interests with no disclosure at all. Unlike Fortas, Thomas almost certainly violated federal law.

Needless to say, there is zero chance that Thomas would give a second’s consideration to resigning. In part this reflects a changed partisan landscape, and most importantly it reflects a Republican Party that just doesn’t give a shit about anything but raw power. Only a sucker leaves money on the table, and don’t you dare question the nonpartisan integritude of the nation’s highest court. It’s also highly convenient that Thomas did not recuse himself from this case. Your back won’t scratch itself!