What happened when Justice Thomas made a decision to ask a question

The comments from Thomas were directed at a government attorney, Ilana H. Eisenstein, in a case called Voisine v. United States. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) to limit domestic abusers’ access to firearms.

“Clarence, you’ve got to hear this”, Thomas said, mimicking Scalia’s booming voice and eagerness to share a draft opinion.

On the eight-year anniversary of Thomas’s last question, the New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin wrote that the silence had “gone from curious to freakish to downright embarrassing, for himself and for the institution he represents”. Whether the recent death of Scalia, the arch-conservative justice who previously sat next to Thomas, had anything to do with his decision to speak, remains unknown.

Thomas has said he thinks his colleagues ask too many questions during arguments.

Or perhaps Scalia’s death was a sort of passing of the baton, leaving Thomas as the only member of the court fully committed to the mode of constitutional interpretation known as originalism, which seeks to apply the understanding of those who drafted and ratified the Constitution. Thomas said that appeared to suspend an individual’s rights under the 2nd Amendment, a portion of the Constitution that has been a special interest for him for years.

And three years ago, Justice Thomas did speak at an argument, but it was to crack a joke rather than to ask a question.

Thomas then followed up with several more questions, stunning those inside and out of the courtroom and firing up plenty of reaction on social media.

He asked the federal government’s attorney, “Can you think of another constitutional right that can be suspended based upon a misdemeanor violation of a state law?”

Just because Justice Thomas doesn’t ask many questions from the bench has nothing to do with his engagement with the cases or the power of his opinions.

In Monday’s second argument, on in a case about judicial recusals, Thomas was again quiet. While they didn’t reach, thankfully, the point where they were able to reach for a firearm and were prohibited from having a firearm under Federal law, they have each been convicted multiple times of domestic violence offenses and possess the firearms in close proximity.

Eisenstein said it was indefinite. The substance of any extended debate about pending cases is discussed among the justices and their clerks, and the outcome of every case is determined long before the two sides present their arguments to the court. “And I think it would be a major question”.

The case before the court involved a challenge to the scope of the domestic violence ban. At worst, it has been viewed as a serious abdication of responsibility that disrespects the Court and his fellow justices.