NEW YORK SUN -- The sage who really ought to be Chief Justice of the United States is looking more and more like Clarence Thomas. That’s our thought as the Supreme Court concludes its term with what we reckon to be the year’s most important case. That’s the one on Congress’s subpoenas for President Trump’s tax records. Justice Thomas filed a brilliant dissent that, we predict, will come to be seen as more important than the majority opinion.
It wasn’t that the majority opinion was so all-fired bad. All nine of the justices could see that the House was way out of line in issuing multiple, wide-ranging subpoenas for the tax and other financial records of the president and his family. Yet instead of just halting the abuse, Judge Roberts proceeded to devise a four-part test for the lower courts considering such subpoenas. The Roberts route guarantees yet more litigation.
Justice Thomas, by contrast, hauled off and filed a blunt dissent. “I would hold that Congress has no power to issue a legislative subpoena for private, nonofficial documents — whether they belong to the President or not,” Judge Thomas wrote.