WASHINGTON — Breaking a decade-long silence, Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday asked several questions from the Supreme Court bench. He spoke just weeks after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose empty seat next to Thomas’ remains draped in black.
It was hard to escape the conclusion that the absence of the voluble Scalia, who had dominated Supreme Court arguments, somehow liberated Thomas and allowed him to resume participating in the court’s most public activity.
The questions came in a minor case on domestic violence convictions and gun rights. Thomas, according to the few reporters in the courtroom, asked a question about whether such convictions suspend a constitutional right.
Thomas last asked a question on Feb. 22, 2006, in a death penalty case. He spoke a total of 11 times earlier in that term and in the previous one.
He has offered shifting reasons for his 10 years of silence. In his 2007 memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” he wrote that he had never asked questions in college or law school and that he had been intimidated by some of his fellow students.
He has also said he is self-conscious about the way he speaks, partly because he had been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia.
In Monday’s second argument, on judicial recusals, Thomas was again quiet.