Monday 16 May 2022 09:16 PM Justice Clarence Thomas says the Roe v. Wade leak has diminished trust in the ... trends now

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas took a cheeky swipe at the media during a recent conference appearance, suggesting he would step down from the bench if he did the job as badly as journalists did theirs.

But he also made a more serious point, saying the leak of a draft opinion on the Roe v Wade case had diminished trust in the country's highest court.

He made his comments during a question and answer session on Friday at the Old Parkland conference - a meeting of black conservatives - in Dallas, Texas.

'One of the things I'd say in response to the media is when they talk about or ... especially early on, about the way I did my job, I said, I will absolutely leave the court when I do my job as poorly as you do yours,' he said in response to a question about tit-for-tat battles between left and right.

'And that was meant as a compliment, really.'

The line got a big laugh from the audience.

'It really is getting to be mean,' he added.

But he had a more serious message when he discussed the importance of a stable judiciary for the functioning of a free society, and the impact of the recent leak of Justice Alito's draft opinion.

Thomas, 73, described the unauthorized disclosure of deliberations as 'tremendously bad.' 

In his remarks, the conservative justice, who has long called for overturning Roe, hinted that a liberal clerk may have leaked Alito's draft opinion, and lamented that partisan rancor has grown more entrenched on the high court.

Thomas pondered: 'I wonder how long we're going to have these institutions at the rate we're undermining them, and then I wonder when they're gone or destabilized what we will have as a country and I don't think the prospects are good if we continue to lose them.'  

He continued: 'When you lose that trust, especially in the institution that I'm in, it changes the institution fundamentally. You begin to look over your shoulder. It's like kind of an infidelity – that you can explain it but you can't undo it,' reports Politico. 

Thomas, a nominee of President George H.W. Bush, said it was beyond 'anyone's imagination' before the May 2 leak of the opinion that even a line of a draft opinion would be released in advance, much less an entire draft that runs nearly 100 pages. 

Following his speech, Thomas sat for a questions and answers session with John Yoo of Berkeley Law School.

He also hinted that the atmosphere on the court had changed for the worse since he was confirmed in 1991, and suggested that a liberal justice's clerk could be behind the leak.

Thomas said: 'This is not the court of that era. I sat with (famously liberal justice) Ruth Ginsburg for almost 30 years and she was actually an easy colleague to deal with... We may have been a dysfunctional family, but we were a family.' 

'Anybody who would, for example, have an attitude to leak documents, that is your general attitude, that is your future on the bench.'

Thomas also touched in passing on the protests by liberals at conservative justices' homes in Maryland and Virginia that followed the draft opinion's release. Thomas argued that conservatives have never acted that way.

'You would never visit Supreme Court justices' houses when things didn´t go our way. We didn´t throw temper tantrums. I think it is ... incumbent on us to always act appropriately and not to repay tit for tat,' he said.

Protests at the Supreme Court and around the nation are also expected Saturday.

More than 380 events were set from Maine to Hawaii, with the largest gatherings expected in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and other big cities, organizers said.

In the nation's capital, activists planned to gather at the Washington Monument before marching to the Supreme Court, which is now surrounded by a security fence.

Tens of thousands of people were expected at the 'Bans off our Bodies' events, providing an outlet for anger and frustration for abortion rights activists after a

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