Clarence Thomas Confirmation: Interest Groups and the Senate
This paper analyzes the role of special interest groups during the Senate confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas, nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. It surveys the participation of liberal organizations such as the NAACP, women's rights groups, and the Alliance for Justice, as well as conservative groups like Citizens United and the Conservative Victory Committee. The paper also examines the American Bar Association's formal evaluative role, the influence of public opinion polls on Democratic senators, the formation of African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves, and the press's handling of leaked information about Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations. Together, these elements illustrate how Supreme Court nominations have become highly politicized contests among competing organized interests.
- Introduction: Liberal and Conservative Groups React to the Thomas Nomination: Overview of group participation in Thomas hearings
- The American Bar Association's Role in the Confirmation Process: ABA's formal evaluative role and Thomas rating
- Conservative Media Campaigns: Conservative Victory Committee and Citizens United: Conservative TV ads to counter opposition to Thomas
- The Alliance for Justice and the Anita Hill Allegations: How Alliance for Justice surfaced Anita Hill's claims
- Public Opinion, the Democratic Caucus, and the Senate Vote: Polls and Black support shift Democratic votes
- African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves: New group challenges race and gender framing
- The Press, Leaks, and Media Ethics: Press handling of leaked harassment allegations debated
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper organizes a complex, multi-actor political event by grouping participants—liberal groups, conservative groups, professional associations, the press—into clearly defined analytical sections, making a crowded topic navigable.
- It incorporates direct quotation from the African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves statement, allowing a primary source to speak on its own terms rather than being merely paraphrased.
- The discussion of poll data (ABC/Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times) grounds claims about public opinion and senatorial behavior in specific, citable evidence.
- The paper balances normative commentary—especially on press ethics and the leak controversy—with descriptive analysis, demonstrating critical engagement rather than simple narration.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies interest-group analysis as applied to judicial politics: it systematically catalogues the range of organizational actors, distinguishes their strategies (media advertising, Senate testimony, written statements, grassroots mobilization), and evaluates the relative influence each had on the confirmation outcome. This approach mirrors the framework used in political science scholarship on organized interests in federal judicial nominations.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad overview of group participation across ten post-1975 nominations before narrowing to Thomas specifically. Each subsequent section focuses on a distinct actor or category of actor—the ABA, conservative media groups, a progressive legal advocacy group, the Democratic caucus, a newly formed Black women's organization, and the press—before closing with a normative assessment of journalistic responsibility during the hearings.
Introduction: Liberal and Conservative Groups React to the Thomas Nomination
The nomination of Clarence Thomas launched a great deal of concern among liberal interest groups. Like Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas was an unashamed conservative. During the Thomas confirmation hearings, the traditional liberal African-American special interest groups — such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — moved away from other liberal groups to support the nomination of only the second African American to the Court (Herrnson, Shaiko & Wilcox 1998). Women's rights groups, however, turned out against the Thomas nomination, especially after Anita Hill's sexual harassment charges were made public. Their efforts, along with those of other traditionally liberal groups, were not enough to stop the confirmation.
Over the years, many groups — both liberal and conservative — as well as the American Bar Association, various law professors, and attorneys from prestigious law firms have testified on behalf of or against Supreme Court nominees. This occurs because the appointment of any one justice to the U.S. Supreme Court can, and usually does, have a major impact on these groups' long-term interests and goals. In the years following the appointment of Justice John Paul Stevens by Gerald R. Ford in 1975, 170 pressure groups testified for, against, or about the ten nominations that actually resulted in Senate confirmation hearings. The Thomas nomination, after that of Robert Bork, was the second most controversial nomination in terms of the number of groups testifying (Herrnson et al. 1998).
Forty-six groups testified or filed written statements against Clarence Thomas. Most nominations have generated far less pressure-group interest or public action. Fifteen groups publicly participated in four or more hearings by testifying or filing a prepared statement with the committee. Those fifteen groups are: the Alliance for Justice, the American Bar Association, Americans for Democratic Action, the AFL-CIO, Center for Constitutional Rights, Concerned Women for America (a conservative group), International Association of Police Chiefs (generally a conservative group), NARAL, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, NOW and NOW LDF, National Women's Political Caucus, United States Justice Foundation, and the Women's Legal Defense Fund (Herrnson et al. 1998).
There is only one group that has given testimony in all ten hearings: the American Bar Association, a result of its singular role in the process. Taking the ABA's recommendations into consideration is now a formal part of the confirmation process.
The American Bar Association's Role in the Confirmation Process
The American Bar Association was founded in 1878 but did not begin to take on a formal role in the selection of Supreme Court justices until the creation of its Committee on the Federal Judiciary in 1946 (Grossman 1965). The ABA's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary is charged with evaluating candidates for the federal judiciary, essentially grading them on their qualifications for the bench. It always prefers to screen candidates before they are formally nominated, but most presidents are reluctant to cede this near-veto power to an independent professional association.
The ABA rates potential Supreme Court justices as "Well Qualified," "Not Opposed (or Qualified)," or "Not Qualified." Votes of "Not Opposed" or "Not Qualified" are very rare and generally indicate potential trouble in the U.S. Senate (Herrnson et al. 1998).
Clarence Thomas was rated as "Qualified" for the Court of Appeals in 1989. His relative inexperience, however, affected his evaluation by the committee, which has generally given Supreme Court nominees unanimous "Well Qualified" ratings. After closely examining Thomas's credentials and qualifications, twelve committee members rated him as merely qualified, two rated him as not qualified, and one abstained from voting entirely. No committee members rated him as well qualified. During the Reagan and Bush administrations, the ABA committee very nearly was relieved of its screening role, as a number of members of the Republican Party charged that too many ideological considerations were influencing committee evaluations. This accusation "raised the question of whether the committee deserved a special role, different from that of other interest groups" (Carter 1994, p. 163).
Conservative Media Campaigns: Conservative Victory Committee and Citizens United
The range of activities open to interest groups in the judicial nominating process is vast, and different groups often utilize one or more strategies based on a variety of internal and external factors (Caldeira, Hojnacki & Wright 1996). When Clarence Thomas was nominated, the Conservative Victory Committee and Citizens United ran a number of television commercials to counteract potential opponents of the nominee — including Senators Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden, and Alan Cranston (Shaiko 1994). By undertaking such media efforts, these groups hoped to foster grassroots reaction that would influence the senators who would be voting on the nomination.
Exactly how much those efforts influenced the Senate is not easy to measure or verify, but these activities added a new dimension to the confirmation process. Not to be outdone, liberal groups carefully orchestrated their own media campaigns against Clarence Thomas (Simon 1992). Commentators across the political spectrum have noted "egregious example[s] of the misinformation" that such media campaigns often produce (Ginsburg 1988).
The purpose of media advertising is to advance a cause. It is not intended to be factually accurate or remotely objective. The potential for miscommunication and distortion of a nominee's views is high, particularly because a sitting judge nominated to fill a higher court vacancy cannot defend himself or herself — running counter to norms that constrain judges from entering the political battleground.
Works Cited
African-American Women in Defense of Ourselves. Advertisement. New York Times, 17 Nov. 1991: A19.
Boot, William. "The Clarence Thomas Hearings; Why Everyone — Left, Right and Center — Found the Press Guilty as Charged." Columbia Journalism Review 30.5 (1992).
Caldeira, Gregory A., Marie Hojnacki, and John R. Wright. The Informational Roles of Organized Interests in the Politics of Federal Judicial Nominations. Paper prepared for delivery at the 1996 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, 1996.
Carter, Stephen L. The Confirmation Mess: Cleaning Up the Federal Appointments Process. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
Ginsburg, Ruth Bader. "Confirming Supreme Court Justices: Thoughts on the Second Opinion Rendered by the Senate." University of Illinois Law Review 101 (1988): 115–17.
Gross, Leonard, and Norman Vieira. Supreme Court Appointments: Judge Bork and the Politicization of Senate Confirmations. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.
Grossman, Joel B. Lawyers and Judges: The ABA and the Politics of Judicial Selection. New York: Wiley, 1965.
Herrnson, Paul S., Ronald G. Shaiko, and Clyde Wilcox, eds. Interest Group Connection: Electioneering, Lobbying, and Policymaking in Washington. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1998.
"Women Tell the Truth: A Conference on Parity, Power and Sexual Harassment." New Directions for Women (1992).
Shaiko, Ronald G. "Le PAC, C'est Moi: Brent Bozell and the Conservative Victory Committee." Risky Business? PAC Decisionmaking in Congressional Elections. Eds. Robert Biersack, Paul S. Herrnson, and Clyde Wilcox. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1994. 181–95.
Simon, Paul. Advice & Consent: Clarence Thomas, Robert Bork, and the Intriguing History of the Supreme Court's Nomination Battles. Washington, D.C.: National Press Books, 1992.
Thomas, Andrew P. Clarence Thomas: A Biography. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2002.
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