A. Leon Higginbotham: “An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague” 1992

On November 29, 1991, Judge A. Leon Higginbotham wrote an open letter to the newest Supreme Court justice titled “An Open Letter to Justice Clarence Thomas from a Federal Judicial Colleague” and published it in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in January 1992. Clarence Thomas was confirmed as the 106th Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 15, 1991. His nomination and confirmation provoked great controversy. One aspect of that controversy was his well-known conservative judicial philosophy, which was compounded by the fact that he was nominated to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, one of the heroes of the civil rights movement, the first African American appointed to the Court, and one of the Court’s “liberal lions.”