[Thomas] has an understandable sensitivity to the common (and false) notion that he functioned as Scalia’s pawn on the Court. The idea was absurd not least because the two justices’ voting records were different, with Thomas well to the right of his senior colleague.

That’s consistent with what Greenburg wrote. Toobin then goes on to fairly articulate Thomas’ views. Toobin doesn’t agree with them, but he presents them accurately.

Clarence Thomas has been the most maligned justice in modern history–and also the most misunderstood and mischaracterized. I found conclusive evidence that far from being Antonin Scalia’s intellectual understudy, Thomas has had a substantial role in shaping the direction of the Court–from his very first week on the bench. The early storyline on Thomas was that he was just following Scalia’s direction, or as one columnist at the time wrote, “Thomas Walks in Scalia’s Shoes.” That is patently false, as the documents and notes in the Blackmun papers unquestionably show. If any justice was changing his vote to join the other that first year, it was Scalia joining Thomas, not the other way around. But his clear and forceful views affected the Court in unexpected ways. Although he shored up conservative positions, his opinions also caused moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to back away and join the justices on the Left.

Both can’t be right…I suspect Greenburg is correct.

Does anyone lack an agenda?

As O’Connor relished her place at the center of the Court’s decisions, Thomas embraced an alternative model of judging, one where he viewed himself as a principled outsider who cared little whether his opinions commanded a majority or even a single additional vote. He was a justice neither influenced by not with unfluence upon his colleagues.(p. 99)

Later he describes Thomas’s “lonely, often solo effort” not as an effort to “restore a constitutional view of limited government,” but as a “lonely, often solo, effort to restore the Constitution in Exile, the world of Supreme Court precedent before 1937.” (p. 100)

In fact, according to Toobin, “Rehnquist rarely assigned important majority opinions to Thomas, because his extreme views made it difficult for him to persuade a majority of his colleagues to join him.” (p. 102)

I don’t know how accurate Toobin is in the details, but he does make a pretty convincing case the Thomas was ideologically isolated and strategically marginal. Then he goes explains that despite this, the guy was well-liked:

So Thomas was ideologically isolated, strategically marginal, and, in oral argument, embarrassingly silent. He was also universally adored.

As you say, he spends a couple of pages with interesting - and to me surprising - anecdotes of Thomas’ friendships with other justices, clerks, and folks in RV parks and at NASCAR races. And then the not-so-surprising grudges.

The comment about him not being a “lonely voice in the wilderness” (p. 111) comes in the context of at least one speech where he talks about the courage it takes to “engage in debates of consdquence, and …challenge accepted wisdom” despite being treated badly, whether it’s worth the “agony” in disagreeing with the majority… etc. So I can understand the logic of pointing out that the guy actually was in a position of authority and more often than not voted with the majority.

In response to my short post yesterday on The Jeffrey Rosen’s NYT Magazine article about Justice Stevens, one of my commenters, referring to the nine members of the Supreme Court, wrote: Nobody likes to work with a backstabber and, when the backstabbe…