During an interview with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies director John Malcom, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said:
The First Amendment has “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion” — What is the establishment of religion? It doesn’t say — it doesn’t have — “wall of separation,” it has establishment of religion. So you go back to the language, what does it mean? We are obligated to do that. We are absolutely obligated.
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Thomas said, “Whatever is in the constitution. It’s all there. The Bill of Attainders is there. The Third Amendment is there — that we skip over. The Second Amendment, we want to pretend [it] doesn’t exist.”
He said the refusal to go back to the language and seek original meaning births opportunity for jurist’s “theories” to “spin off in a totally different direction from the limitations built into the constitution itself.”