Justice Clarence Thomas has opened up about his early relationship with fellow Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a rare and candid interview setting.
Thomas sat down with Senator Ted Cruz on his “Verdict” podcast, where the conversation turned to his overlapping years with Alito at Yale Law School.
The two justices attended Yale at the same time for two years but never became friends during that period, a fact that apparently puzzled Thomas for some time.
Thomas recalled confronting Alito about the distance between them, saying: “So I said, ‘Sam, how come we were there two years together? Why weren’t we friends?'”
The answer, according to Thomas, was blunt and unexpected: “‘Clarence, you were scary,'” Thomas recalled Alito telling him.
Part of the reason for that perception may have been Thomas’s distinctive law-school aesthetic, which he described as bib overalls and combat boots around the Yale campus.
Thomas himself acknowledged that the environment at Yale during that period was uncomfortable, saying simply: “It was just awful.”
Cruz, during a separate appearance on “The Will Cain Show,” noted that Thomas had been a “left-wing radical” in college before eventually shifting toward conservatism later in life.
Thomas also showed some relief that the era predated modern smartphone culture, joking: “I’m so glad they didn’t have these phones where you could take a lot of pictures.”
The anecdote offers a rare glimpse into the personal histories of two justices who would go on to shape American constitutional law for decades.
Alito, of course, would later author the majority opinion in Dobbs, the landmark ruling that overturned nearly five decades of abortion rights precedent and reshaped the constitutional landscape.
The interview underscores how dramatically both men have evolved from their Yale days, when one found the other too intimidating to approach across a law school campus.