Silent Justice: The Clarence Thomas Story.

• Author: Mauro, Tony
• Position: Political booknotes: jurist's prudence - Review

SILENT JUSTICE: The Clarence Thomas Story by John Greenya Barricade Books, $24.95 AS HARD AS IT IS TO BELIEVE, it has been 10 years since Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court. Ten years since the Columbus Day weekend when the nation was transfixed by the lurid, bizarre Senate Judiciary Committee hearings into allegations that he sexually harassed Anita Hill. Ten years since the first President Bush declared Thomas to be the "most qualified person" to take the seat occupied until then by Thurgood Marshall.

It has been a remarkable decade for Thomas, who, in the darkest days of the Anita Hill mess, said he would never be able to reclaim his good name. He seems to have recovered at least some of it, emerging as an increasingly influential, if still controversial, justice. In the spring of 2001, Thomas administered the oath of office to three of his oldest friends, who now occupy the top three positions in the Justice Department: Attorney General John Ashcroft, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, and Solicitor General Ted Olson.

Through hard work and a deepening--though disputed--jurisprudence, he has even begun to erase the near-racist caricature painted early on by his critics: that he was an unqualified, unthinking "yes" man for Antonin Scalia, manipulated by his white law clerks. In his personal life, Thomas has been transformed by a new addition to his family: grandnephew Mark, adopted by Thomas and his wife out of a risky home situation in 1997.

Exploring how Thomas got here from there could be a splendid basis for a book, but John Greenya's work does almost nothing to advance that goal. In fact, most of it could have been written a decade ago, or a little later, after the post-confirmation books on Thomas came out. Greenya cites those extensively, as well as long excerpts from Thomas's speeches and writings that pad out the book but add little new insight into how Thomas operates as a powerful justice today.

Even the interview that has been billed as a major new addition to the Thomas story is something of a retread. Greenya spoke with Barry Maddox, owner of a Washington D.C. chain of electronics stores, who convincingly describes Thomas as a regular consumer of rented adult videos in the mid-1980s. But Maddox has surfaced before, notably in Strange...