The Thomas Appointment: Defeats and Victories for Women

Abstract

On October 15, 1991, the United States Senate approved the appointment of Judge Clarence Thomas to the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 52 to 48. The presidents's selection of Judge Thomas to replace Thurgood Marshall as the Court's lone African-American justice and the hearings that preceded the Senate's confirmation of his appointment initially engendered questions about his qualifications to serve on the Supreme Court and his conservative political positions. Later, queries arising from accusations of sexual harassment took center stage. In fact, in the weeks immediately preceding his confirmation attention turned almost entirely from his judicial qualifications and his political positions to allegations of sexual harassment.Thomas's confirmation is a story of racial politics enmeshed with gender politics and the conservative social agenda of the Reagan-Bush administrations. It is important to understand this process if one is to fathom some of the events that followed in the wake of this judicial appointment.