Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
Ico print Print | Ico email Email | Facebook | | RSS

Clarence Thomas ’74JD: The Law School courts a prodigal son.

By the staff | 12:32pm May 31 2012

In his memoir five years ago, Clarence Thomas ’74JD valued his Yale Law School diploma at 15 cents. Now the US Supreme Court Justice seems ready to give his alma mater another two cents worth: he has agreed to keynote a Law School alumni dinner at the National Press Club in Washington this month.

“I think this comes out of his own soul-searching,” Yale law professor Akhil Amar ’80, ’84JD, tells Reuters. “He wants to regain his sense of balance with Yale.” After spurning past invitations to speak at the Law School and to have his portrait painted, Thomas quietly visited last December, sitting in on Amar’s class on federal jurisdiction and meeting with the Yale Law School Federalist Society and the Black Law Students Association.

“He was beaming from ear to ear while he was here,” Law School spokeswoman Jan Conroy tells Reuters. “He seemed to have a wonderful time.”

The June 28 dinner will come as the court wraps up its term. So alumni may be eager to pay $95 a head to hear Thomas’s two cents.

The comment period has expired.