SUPREME COURT JUSTICE ANITA HILL

“Let's Make Clarence Thomas's Worst Nightmare Come True,” says Nell Scovell in the last issue of Vanity Fair.   

I’d pondered that too, but the notion seemed so revengeful, I quickly dumped it with my most outlandish ideas, like cashing in my assets and buying Citibank stock for a dollar back in March (I finally bought some "C's" at four dollars a few weeks ago). 

Scovell would like to see President Obama appoint Brandeis University law professor Anita Hill to the Supreme Court.  And so would I.

“She’s reasonably young, smart, and—after her ordeal testifying at Clarence Thomas’s 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing—she certainly understands politics as well as law [and when] Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) tried to pick apart her testimony, failing to grasp the most rudimentary aspects of sexual harassment in the workplace [he] challenged Hill’s every statement, every motive. Why didn’t she quit her job? Why didn’t she tell someone? Calmly, Hill tried to explain something Specter has never endured—power politics from the unempowered side,” writes Scovell. 

Like Scovell, I screamed at the TV.  I also felt good that Anita never raised her voice and never showed her anger. 

He notes that in contrast, Thomas spewed ad hominem attacks when he took the mic. “This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace,” [Thomas] barked at the Judiciary Committee. “And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.”

The irony is that, in the end, a man who claimed to have pulled himself up by his own bootstraps resorted to playing the race card and managed confirmation by 52–48, the narrowest margin ever.

Last December, Scovell wrote to Professor Hill and asked if she had considered the notion of a Supreme Court appointment and she replied:

“Dear Ms. Scovell:

My mother would have warned me against answering your e-mail and participating in the kind of “devilment” you are up to. Last month I was speaking in Maine and was asked about being appointed to the Court. I responded, “That would be awkward, don’t you think?” After all, there ought to be some level of civility, if not camaraderie, among The Nine. I’m very excited about Barack Obama’s presidency and its potential for healing, but I don’t think this is one that he can, or should try to, pull off.

Not that you asked, but high on my list of people Obama ought to consider for the Supreme Court are Dean Harold Koh of Yale Law School (international law specialist) and Lani Guinier at Harvard. (She never had her chance to prove herself before the Judiciary Committee.) I’d also like for him to go outside the Northeast corridor and Ivy League Schools for someone who has been on a state supreme court deciding significant social/economic issues.

Best,
Anita Hill”

“Even if she doesn’t want it,” Scovell writes “I still think she’d be great. To use her phrase, there’s such “potential for healing.” I want [Arlen Specter (D-PA)] to finally treat Hill with the respect she deserves. I want Hill confirmed with more votes than Thomas. And, mostly, I want Hill to counter Thomas’s continued assaults on personal freedoms and equality.  At an Ohio townhall in March 2008, then-candidate Obama was asked if he’d appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. At first, he stepped back to describe what he’d be looking for in general. “I want my judges to understand that part of the role of the Court is to look out for people who don’t have political power, the people who are on the outside, the people who aren’t represented, the people who don’t have a lot of money, who don’t have connections. That’s the role of the Court,” Obama said. “And, yes, I want a woman on the Court. Absolutely,” he added. Sounds like Anita Hill to me.”

I wholeheartedly concur.