The Supreme Court appears to be dividing 6-3 — on whether the nine individual Justices are attending tonight’s State of the Union address.
As you might recall, last year Justice Samuel Alito got into some controversy when he reflexively mouthed out the words “not true” in response to Obama’s criticism of the Citizens United ruling, which overturned a variety of limits on corporate spending in political campaigns.
Several weeks later, Chief Justice John Roberts said he was “very troubled” by the whole environment of the State of the Union: “To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we are there.”
And as it turns out, some of the conservatives justices won’t be there this time, either — a new practice for Alito himself, and a long-standing one for others. But interestingly enough, Roberts is still going.
• Alito won’t be there this time around. Instead, he will be in Hawaii — Obama’s birthplace, interestingly enough. He will deliver a speech at the University of Hawaii School of Law tonight, and speak again tomorrow at the Hawaii Supreme Court.
This past fall, Alito started to speak up on his side of the story. “I doubt that I will be there in January,” he said, also adding: “We have to sit there like the proverbial potted plant…and that’s sometimes very hard.”
• Justice Clarence Thomas, whose wife Ginny is a high-ranking conservative activist, will not be attending. For his part, he has previously discussed why he has stopped coming. “I don’t go because it has become so partisan and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there,” Thomas said in February of 2010, adding that “there’s a lot that you don’t hear on TV — the catcalls, the whooping and hollering and under-the-breath comments.”
• As for Antonin Scalia, he told The Hill that he has not attended any State of the Union address “in at least 10 years, and I’m not starting tomorrow night either.”
Fair enough — after you helped pick an actual president, who needs to attend a measly speech?
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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