On July 1, 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court of the United States to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had announced his retirement. At the time of his nomination, Thomas was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; President Bush had appointed him to that position in March 1990.

The nomination proceedings were contentious from the start, especially over the issue of abortion. Many women's groups and civil rights groups opposed Thomas based on his conservative political views, just as they had opposed Bush's Supreme Court nominee from the previous year, David Souter.

Toward the end of the confirmation process, sexual harassment allegations against Thomas by Anita Hill, a law professor who had previously worked under Thomas at the United States Department of Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, were leaked to the media from a confidential FBI report. The allegations led to further investigations and a media frenzy about sexual harassment. Televised hearings were re-opened and held by the Senate Judiciary Committee before the nomination was moved to the full, Democratic-controlled Senate for a vote.

On October 15, 1991, Thomas was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States by a narrow Senate majority of 52 to 48. He took the oath of office on October 23, 1991.

Nomination Justice William Brennan stepped down from the Supreme Court in 1990. Thomas was one of five candidates on Bush's shortlist and was the one Bush was most interested in nominating. However, Bush's staff made three arguments against nominating Thomas at the time: Thomas had only served eight months as a judge; Bush could expect to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall with Thomas in due time; and multiple senior advisors told Bush that they did not feel that Thomas was ready. Bush eventually decided to nominate Judge David Souter of the First Circuit instead, who was easily confirmed.

White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu promised that Bush would fill the next Supreme Court vacancy with a "true conservative" and predicted a "knock-down, drag-out, bloody-knuckles, grass-roots fight" over confirmation.Jefferson, Margo. "The Thomas-Hill Question, Answered Anew" , The New York Times (November 11, 1994). On July 1, 1991, President Bush nominated Judge Clarence Thomas of the District of Columbia Circuit to replace retiring justice Thurgood Marshall, a civil rights icon and the court's first African American justice.Dowd, Maureen. "The Supreme Court; Conservative Black Judge, Clarence Thomas, Is Named to Marshall's Court Seat" , The New York Times (July 2, 1991). When introducing Thomas that day, the president called him "the best person" in the country to take Marshall's place on the court, a characterization belied, according to constitutional law expert Michael Gerhardt, by Thomas's "limited professional distinction, with his most significant legal experiences having been a controversial tenure as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and barely more than one year of experience as a federal court of appeals judge."

In 1992, Gerhardt described the Thomas nomination as "a bold political move calculated to make it more difficult for many of the same civil rights organizations and southern blacks, who opposed Judge Robert Bork's Supreme Court nomination, to oppose Justice Thomas." He also wrote that, "in selecting Justice Thomas, President Bush returned to a practice – nominating extreme ideologues for the Supreme Court – that many hoped had ended with the Senate's rejection of Judge Bork."

Kenneth M. Duberstein (former White House Chief of Staff under Ronald Reagan) and John C. Danforth served as Thomas's "sherpas" (advisors tasked with guiding him through the rigors of their confirmation). Duberstein had previously been a sherpa to Bush's earlier Supreme Court appointee, David Souter, during his nomination process. He had also played a similar advisory role years prior to George Shultz during his confirmation process for United States Secretary of State.

Reception Attorney General Richard Thornburgh had previously warned Bush that replacing Thurgood Marshall, who was widely revered as a civil rights icon, with any candidate who was not perceived to share Marshall's views would make the confirmation process difficult; and the Thomas nomination filled various groups with indignation, among them the NAACP, Urban League and the National Organization for Women, who believed he would likely swing the ideological balance on the court to the right. They especially opposed Thomas's appointment because of his criticism of affirmative action and also because they were suspicious of his position on Roe v. Wade.

In the second half of the 20th century, Supreme Court nominees were customarily evaluated by a committee of the American Bar Association (ABA) before being considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee.Hall, Kermit and McGuire, Kevin. The Judicial Branch, p. 155 (Oxford University Press 2006). Anticipating that the ABA would rate Thomas poorly, the White House and Republican Senators pressured the ABA for at least the mid-level "qualified" rating, and simultaneously attempted to discredit the ABA as partisan.Senior Republicans claimed that while Thomas was well-qualified, the ABA would not support him because they asserted that the ABA had been politicized. The White House attempted to preemptively discredit the ABA as partisan, and Republican Senators threatened to bar the ABA from future participation if it gave Thomas anything less than a "qualified" rating. Ultimately, on a scale of well-qualified, qualified, or unqualified, 12 members of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary voted that he was "qualified", one abstained, and the other two voted "not qualified", for an overall vote of qualified. This vote represented one of the lowest levels of support for Supreme Court nominees.Foskett, Ken. Judging Thomas, p. 224 (William Morrow 2004).Abraham, Henry. Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments From Washington to Bush II, pp. 27-30, 299 (Rowman and Littlefield 2007).Yalof, David. Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees, page 214 (University of Chicago Press, 2001).Segal, Jeffrey and Spaeth, Harold. The Supreme Court and the attitudinal model revisited, page 187 (Cambridge University Press, 2002).Hall, Kermit and McGuire, Kevin. Institutions of American Democracy: The Judicial Branch, page 155 (Oxford University Press, 2006). Although the ABA vote was viewed as a "significant embarrassment to the Bush administration", it ultimately had little impact on Thomas's nomination.Viera, Norman and Gross, Leonard. Supreme Court appointments: Judge Bork and the politicization of Senate Confirmations, page 137 (SIU Press, 1998).

Some of the public statements of Thomas's opponents foreshadowed the confirmation fight that would occur. One such statement came from African-American activist attorney Florynce Kennedy at a July 1991 conference of the National Organization for Women in New York City. Referring to the failure of Ronald Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork, she said of Thomas, "We're going to 'bork' him.""The Borking Begins; Linda Chavez's mistake was she took a less fortunate person into her home" (Editorial), The Wall Street Journal (January 8, 2001). The liberal campaign to defeat the Bork nomination served as a model for liberal interest groups opposing Thomas.Tushnet, Mark. A Court Divided, p. 335 (Norton & Company 2005). Likewise, in view of what had happened to Bork, Thomas's confirmation hearings were also approached as a political campaign by the White House and Senate Republicans.

Judiciary Committee review

Hearings Public confirmation hearings on the Thomas nomination began on September 10, 1991, and lasted for ten days. The senators' focus as they questioned Thomas and an array of witnesses for and against the nomination was on Thomas's legal views, as expressed in his speeches, writings, and the decisions he had handed down as a federal appeals court judge.

Under questioning, Thomas repeatedly asserted that he had not formulated a position on Roe v. Wade, or had any conversations with anyone regarding the issue.Rosenbaum, David. "No-Comment Is Common at Hearings for Nominees" , The New York Times (July 12, 2005).

At one point in the beginning of the proceedings, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden asked Thomas if he believed the Constitution granted any sort of property rights to individuals as described in Richard Epstein's book Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, which had been published by Harvard University Press in 1985. Biden held the book up for Thomas to see and denounced its contents. In his book, Epstein argues that the government should be regarded with the same respect as any other private entity in a property dispute. The Cato Institute later paraphrased Biden's general line of questioning in the hearing as, "Are you now or have you ever been a libertarian?"

Committee vote After extensive debate, the Judiciary Committee voted 13–1 on September 27, 1991, to send the Thomas nomination to the full Senate without recommendation. A motion earlier in the day to give the nomination a favorable recommendation had failed 7–7. Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas became public after the nomination had been reported out from the committee. Up to that time, there had been no public suggestion of inappropriate behavior or misconduct in Thomas's past.

Sexual harassment allegations On October 6, 1991, after the conclusion of the confirmation hearings, and while the full Senate was debating whether to give final approval to Thomas's nomination, NPR Supreme Court correspondent Nina Totenberg aired information from a leaked Judiciary Committee/FBI report stating that a former colleague of Thomas, University of Oklahoma law school professor Anita Hill, accused him of making unwelcome sexual comments to her when the two worked together at the Department of Education (ED) and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In the same FBI report, Thomas testified that he had once promoted Allyson Duncan over Hill as his chief of staff at the EEOC.

Shortly after the president selected Thomas as his nominee, democratic committee staffers began hearing rumors that Thomas had sexually harassed one or more women in the past. In early September, committee chairman Joe Biden asked the Bush White House to authorize an FBI investigation into Hill's charges. FBI agents interviewed Hill on September 23, and interviewed Thomas on September 25. Despite the allegations, Biden saw no reason to postpone the committee's scheduled vote on Thomas's nomination.

After Totenberg's story aired, Biden quickly came under pressure to reopen the hearings from House Democratic women and from various groups that had opposed the Thomas nomination earlier in the process. As a result, the final Senate vote on the nomination was postponed and the confirmation hearings were reopened. It was only the third time in the Senate's history that such an action had been taken (and had not been done since 1925, when the nomination of Harlan F. Stone was recommitted to the Judiciary Committee). Amid the resulting frenzy the president declared that he had "total confidence" in Thomas.

Anita Hill testimony