Doubting Thomas: Confirmation Veracity Meets Performance Reality

At the close of the United States Supreme Court\u27s 1994 term, Justice Clarence Thomas became the center of news media attention for his important role as a prominent member of the Court\u27s resurgent conservative bloc. More frequently than in past terms, Thomas\u27s opinions articulated the conservative position for his fellow Justices. According to one report, The newly energized Thomas has shown little hesitancy this term in leading the conservative charge. Another article referred to Thomas\u27s full-throated emergence as a distinctive and articulate judicial voice. Thomas\u27s new prominence, assertiveness, and visibility have been attributed to his emergence from the shadows of an infamous confirmation battle. As described by one report, [Thomas] has hit his stride this year after three years of what some say was a healing period after a confirmation ordeal in which he denied sexual harassment charges by Anita Hill. The emergence of Thomas as a prominent actor on the Supreme Court may reflect, in part, conventional scholarly wisdom that at least three terms are required for a new Justice to become assimilated into the Court\u27s decisionmaking processes. Because neophyte Justices require a period of adjustment, scholars prefer to assess Justices\u27 initial performances after the new judicial officers have served for at least three terms. In light of his four years of service and his publicly recognized emergence as an important Justice, this is an appropriate moment to analyze Justice Thomas\u27s performance. Because Thomas received close scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, his confirmation hearing testimony provides a useful reference point for assessing his actual performance as a Justice. This Article will examine Thomas\u27s confirmation testimony on issues such as voting rights, abortion, religion, criminal justice, and affirmative action, and will compare this testimony with Justice Thomas\u27s Supreme Court record in these areas. This comparison will show that significant aspects of Justice Thomas\u27s confirmation testimony are at odds with his decisions on the Supreme Court

Doubting Thomas: Confirmation Veracity Meets Performance Reality

At the close of the United States Supreme Court\u27s 1994 term, Justice Clarence Thomas became the center of news media attention for his important role as a prominent member of the Court\u27s resurgent conservative bloc. More frequently than in past terms, Thomas\u27s opinions articulated the conservative position for his fellow Justices. According to one report, The newly energized Thomas has shown little hesitancy this term in leading the conservative charge. Another article referred to Thomas\u27s full-throated emergence as a distinctive and articulate judicial voice. Thomas\u27s new prominence, assertiveness, and visibility have been attributed to his emergence from the shadows of an infamous confirmation battle. As described by one report, [Thomas] has hit his stride this year after three years of what some say was a healing period after a confirmation ordeal in which he denied sexual harassment charges by Anita Hill. The emergence of Thomas as a prominent actor on the Supreme Court may reflect, in part, conventional scholarly wisdom that at least three terms are required for a new Justice to become assimilated into the Court\u27s decisionmaking processes. Because neophyte Justices require a period of adjustment, scholars prefer to assess Justices\u27 initial performances after the new judicial officers have served for at least three terms. In light of his four years of service and his publicly recognized emergence as an important Justice, this is an appropriate moment to analyze Justice Thomas\u27s performance. Because Thomas received close scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee, his confirmation hearing testimony provides a useful reference point for assessing his actual performance as a Justice. This Article will examine Thomas\u27s confirmation testimony on issues such as voting rights, abortion, religion, criminal justice, and affirmative action, and will compare this testimony with Justice Thomas\u27s Supreme Court record in these areas. This comparison will show that significant aspects of Justice Thomas\u27s confirmation testimony are at odds with his decisions on the Supreme Court

The BigBOSS Experiment

BigBOSS is a Stage IV ground-based dark energy experiment to study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) and the growth of structure with a wide-area galaxy and quasar redshift survey over 14,000 square degrees. It has been conditionally accepted by NOAO in response to a call for major new instrumentation and a high-impact science program for the 4-m Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak. The BigBOSS instrument is a robotically-actuated, fiber-fed spectrograph capable of taking 5000 simultaneous spectra over a wavelength range from 340 nm to 1060 nm, with a resolution R = 3000-4800. Using data from imaging surveys that are already underway, spectroscopic targets are selected that trace the underlying dark matter distribution. In particular, targets include luminous red galaxies (LRGs) up to z = 1.0, extending the BOSS LRG survey in both redshift and survey area. To probe the universe out to even higher redshift, BigBOSS will target bright [OII] emission line galaxies (ELGs) up to z = 1.7. In total, 20 million galaxy redshifts are obtained to measure the BAO feature, trace the matter power spectrum at smaller scales, and detect redshift space distortions. BigBOSS will provide additional constraints on early dark energy and on the curvature of the universe by measuring the Ly-alpha forest in the spectra of over 600,000 2.2 < z < 3.5 quasars. BigBOSS galaxy BAO measurements combined with an analysis of the broadband power, including the Ly-alpha forest in BigBOSS quasar spectra, achieves a FOM of 395 with Planck plus Stage III priors. This FOM is based on conservative assumptions for the analysis of broad band power (kmax = 0.15), and could grow to over 600 if current work allows us to push the analysis to higher wave numbers (kmax = 0.3). BigBOSS will also place constraints on theories of modified gravity and inflation, and will measure the sum of neutrino masses to 0.024 eV accuracy.Comment: This report is based on the BigBOSS proposal submission to NOAO in October 2010, and reflects the project status at that time with minor update