Clarence Thomas

The Supreme Court opinion that drew the most praise last week from a proudly "progressive" constitutional law group was written by perhaps the court's staunchest conservative, Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas would have gone further than the court's liberals in a decision that allowed injured patients to sue drug makers. In a 24-page concurrence, he said the court should have declared that judges have no authority to void state consumer-protection laws based on "agency musings" from Washington.

In a rare interview, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas described himself as a high-achieving student who was mentored by a prominent priest when he enrolled in a Catholic college in Massachusetts in the late 1960s. But he bitterly rejected the idea that he benefited from affirmative action because he was black. "That was the creation of the politicians, the people with a lot of mouth and nothing to say, and your industry," Thomas told a writer for Business Week magazine.

CLARENCE THOMAS is the most intriguing and perplexing of the U.S. Supreme Court's nine justices. Sixteen years ago, Thomas narrowly won Senate confirmation following an ugly debate over unproved allegations of sexual harassment. Once on the court, Thomas quickly began articulating a consistent, conservative judicial philosophy in which the original intent of the Constitution's framers, as best that can be determined, trumps all other arguments and considerations.

washington -- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas settles scores in an angry and vivid memoir, scathingly condemning the media, the Democratic senators who opposed his nomination and the "mob" of liberal elites and activist groups who he says desecrated his life. "My Grandfather's Son" goes on sale Monday. Thomas reportedly received $1.5 million for the 289-page account of his life in rural Georgia, his reliance on religious faith and his rise to the Supreme Court.

CLARENCE THOMAS, the most conservative justice on a distinctly conservative U.S. Supreme Court, may well be the nation's most polarizing legal figure, and so it is only fitting that he has penned a polarizing memoir. In addition to chronicling his amazing journey from crushing poverty in his native Georgia to the nation's highest court, "My Grandfather's Son" is a furious assault on liberalism generally and on what Thomas calls the liberal political elite that sought to derail his confirmation.

Clarence Thomas grew up poor and black in the segregated South. By the time he went to college and law school in New England, he was a self-described "black radical." But by his mid-30s, he had transformed himself into one of the nation's most prominent black conservatives and was on the path that would lead him to the Supreme Court.

Anita Hill, whose sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas nearly derailed his Supreme Court nomination 16 years ago, said Tuesday she stood by her account of his behavior, disputing Thomas' assertion in a new book that the charges were politically motivated. "I stand by my testimony" at a 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination, Hill wrote in an opinion article in the New York Times. "I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.

Re "Step by step on a path toward conservatism," Oct. 2 Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants to have his cake, eat it and now sell it to us. Let him promote his book simply by claiming he comes from poverty and had a strict grandfather, which is, apparently, the core of his conservative philosophy. Thomas bemoans liberal approaches to social justice. Conservatives -- even those as callous as Thomas -- do have solutions to social problems.

In his new, bestselling memoir, "My Grandfather's Son," Justice Clarence Thomas tells the story of his personal struggle to overcome poverty and racism. Raised by his grandparents in Savannah, Ga., he credits his success to his grandfather's strict work ethic and to those who shaped his early life and helped him along the way. "Their story is my story," he writes.

The memoir of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas will be coming to a bookstore near you -- just not as soon as expected. Nearly five years after starting his autobiography, and three years after getting a $1-million-plus book deal, Thomas is still writing. HarperCollins Publishers paid Thomas a $500,000 advance in 2003 and awaits delivery, which is behind schedule. The book, detailing Thomas' rise from destitution in tiny Pin Point, Ga.