Justice Thomas Eulogy at Justice Scalia Memorial Service (C-SPAN)

the c-span networks bring you long-form public affairs programming from the nation's capital and are a public service of your television provider c-span created by cable for this I feel quite inadequate to the task and I find this very difficult thank you for the prayer father Paul Maureen our thoughts and prayers remain with you and your family we pray that God will bring comfort and peace to you to each of you I was truly blessed to have had Nino at the court when I became a member in 1991 and I was blessed many times over over them almost 25 years that we served together there were countless chats walking to chambers after a sitting or after our conferences those very brief visits usually involved more laughter than anything else a joke a funny word a memory and there were many buck each other up visits too many to Cal there were many checking on one another after one of us had had an unpleasant experience daily and there were calls to test an idea or work through a problem I treasured the many times we had lunch with our law clerks at a v's where he invariably had an anchovy pizza my clerk family and I will continue this tradition by always toasting Nino as we gather which is pretty regularly but no anchovy pizza I love the eagerness and satisfaction in his voice when he finished the writing with which he was particularly pleased Clarence you have got to hear this it is really good whereupon he would deliver a dramatic reading after fumbling with his computer for a while he worked hard to get things right the broad principles and the details of law grammar syntax and vocabulary he was passionate about it all and it was all important to him none was beneath him and all deserved and received his full attention in sports parlance he gave everything 110 percent for the past few years my place on the bench has been between Nino and our friend Steve Ryder I loved the back-and-forth that took place especially the passing of notes from Steve to Nino and Nino to Steve and the whispered or muttered or more appropriately muttered commentary where Nino wanted to talk quietly with me about something he would lean far back in his chair and say in an almost endearing tone brother clients what do you think and of course he would offer his opinion of it on various matters on one occasion he commented that in typical Nino fashion that one of our opinions that had become an important precedent was and I quote just a horrible opinion one of the worst ever I thought briefly about what he had said and whispered Nino you wrote it in a sense it is providential and certainly not probable that we were served together I only knew of him knew of him but had never met him he was from the Northeast while I was from the southeast he came from a house of educators and I from a household of almost no formal education but we shared our Catholic faith and our Jesuit education as well as our sense of vocation for different reasons and from different origins we were heading in the same direction so we walked together and work together for a quarter century and along the way we developed an unbreakable bond of trust and deep affection many will fittingly deservedly and rightfully say much about his intellect and jurisprudence but there is so much more to this good man as one of our colleagues said the other day he filled the room his passion his sense of humor were always on full display and so was his love for Maureen his family his church our country and our Constitution yesterday I finished Eric Metaxas biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer one of Hitler's Laz acts before the Allies defeated Germany was to have this man of God executed I thought of this memorial this memorial gathering here today as I read Bishop Bell's eulogy of Bonhoeffer with apologies I borrow from it liberally and quote it loosely with him a piece of my own life is carried to the grave yet yet our eyes are upon thee we believe in the communion of saints the forgiveness of sins the resurrection of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting we give thanks to God for the life the suffering the witness of our brother whose friends we were privileged to be we pray God to lead us to through his discipleship from this world into his heavenly kingdom to fulfill in us that other word that Dietrich Bonhoeffer use non potest non late re chris bharat in dominum while in god confiding i cannot but rejoice god bless you brother nina god bless you

Channel: C-SPAN

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Keywords: Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court, SCOTUS, Antonin Scalia, C-SPAN, CSPAN

Id: cs6ktcNj_6g

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 01 2016