St. Thomas More

For all the designer fashions festooning the inaugural ceremonies for President Barack Obama’s second term today, none appeared quite as inscrutable as the hat donned by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

However, it took a mere reminder of the last inauguration, when the justice appeared with another notable skull cap, to understand the justice’s fashion statement.

“This year’s hat was a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbein’s famous portrait of St. Thomas More” (see above), legal expert Jeffrey Toobin noted, as the Atlantic Wire explains. “It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia, presented to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.”

The justices of the court, as pictured above left, may have had something else on their minds this morning — like the breakfast served at the court.

Original post is Scalia Channels St. Thomas More by Political Capital.

Photograph by Cliff Owen/AP Photo

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas laughs while talking with other guests at The Federalist Society’s 2011 Annual Dinner in Washington.

For almost seven years, Justice Clarence Thomas has sat silently through Supreme Court oral arguments.

Until today, when he apparently offered a crack about a couple of the nation’s top law schools.

Thomas jumped in as Justice Antonin Scalia was asking a Louisiana prosecutor about the adequacy of a criminal defendant’s lawyers.

The lawyer, Carla S. Sigler, confirmed that one member of the defense team was a graduate of Yale Law School and that a second had attended Harvard Law School. Scalia, a Harvard graduate, replied, “son of a gun.”

Thomas, a Yale graduate who until recently had a strained relationship with his alma mater, quipped that a Yale degree could be a sign of incompetence, rather than competence, according to Scotusblog, which tracks the court and is sponsored by Bloomberg.

The transcript skipped over this interchange, also missed by the court’s sound recording, though the transcript does note some laughter — with Sigler responding: “I would refute that, Justice Thomas.”

Thomas hasn’t asked an actual question in oral arguments since Feb. 22, 2006.

Original post is Thomas Breaks Silence: Yale Training? by Political Capital.