Despite serving as a Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas says that Stanford Law School (SLS) is still “off limits” to him.
Thomas made those comments at a Hoover Institution event last month commemorating the legacy of conservative economist and former Senior Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell. In a conversation with Peter M. Robinson, a current Hoover Institution Fellow, Thomas decried institutions like SLS for a perceived lack of conservative ideas.
“We simply got no audience. You know, I have never been to Stanford Law School,” said Thomas. “There are certainly places that are just presumptively off limits…Even if you do [get invited], it comes with all this antecedent—or this attendant animosity and negativity, in other words—to make it unpalatable.”
The justice described the internet as an alternative way of encountering voices like Sowell’s, whom he praised as someone “who gives you a license and a way…to think things through for yourself.”
“It’s just on YouTube,” Thomas added, referring to Sowell’s arguments. “It’s available to everybody, and students get to make up their own mind.”
SLS pushed back on Thomas’ claims.
“We would be honored to host Justice Thomas at Stanford Law School,” a Stanford Law School spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital. The spokesperson added that Stanford’s Constitutional Law Center commonly hosts talks between its director Michael McConnell, a conservative law professor, and members of the judiciary.
Thomas and SLS did not respond to The Daily’s requests for comment.
Stanford has faced controversy with conservative judges in the past. In 2023, a speech by Kyle Duncan, a judge for the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, was cut short by student protesters who interrupted Duncan, leading to a verbal altercation between Duncan, student protestors, and then-SLS Associate Dean for Diversity Tirien Steinbach.
Thomas has previously criticized the state of American legal education. At the 2022 11th Circuit Judicial Conference, following a leaked draft opinion of Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Thomas lamented a “different attitude of the young” that he described as less respectful of legal institutions.
He has also derided his alma mater, Yale Law School, famously pinning a 15-cent price sticker to his 1974 diploma; in his 2007 memoir “My Grandfather’s Son,” Thomas said his degree “bore the taint of racial preference” and that it had been a “mistake” to attend Yale.
In the 2025-2026 school year, Stanford hosted Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ’58 and Stephen Breyer ’59. The Law School typically invites a host of other judges during the school year.