The Supreme Court has come under assault in recent years, especially after President Donald Trump appointed three conservatives to the bench during his first term. For decades, leftists celebrated the Court as a sacred institution when it advanced their progressive agenda, but since 2016, they’ve called it a threat to democracy.

Thankfully, one stalwart on the Court isn’t letting politics or personal attacks get in the way of defending the Constitution: Justice Clarence Thomas. Yesterday, Thomas bypassed Justice John Paul Stevens as the second-longest serving justice. If he remains on the bench through May 2028, he’ll pass William O. Douglas for the top spot.

His longevity is impressive, but Thomas’s principles have guided him through the tumult of American politics in his service to the Constitution. He’s stood strong in defending the Second Amendment, protecting the life of the unborn, and helping to dismantle affirmative action, just to name a few key issues.

As Reuters (unhappily) reports, “Thomas has helped the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, in place since 2020, to act assertively. On back-to-back days in June 2022, he was the author of a landmark ruling expanding gun rights protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment and joined other conservative justices in overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide. Thomas also has championed an expansive view of religious liberty, opposed gay marriage, fought ⁠affirmative action preferences for minorities in university admissions and hiring, supported the death penalty and broad presidential powers, and curbed campaign-finance restrictions.”

These are not inconsequential decisions, but those that strike at the heart of the progressive movement. Reuters adds, “Thomas continues to be blunt in public remarks. On April 15 at the University of Texas, Thomas called progressivism a political philosophy that poses an existential threat to the United States and its 18th-century founding principles.” Our Emmy Griffin weighed in on those remarks.

The Constitution is Thomas’s rudder in the rough seas of American politics, even if it means parting with his fellow conservatives. “He joins the Court when it moves toward the Constitution, but doesn’t trim his sails merely because a plurality of colleagues has stopped short of first principles,” writes Ilya Shapiro at City Journal. “In other words, Thomas follows the Constitution wherever it leads — even when that takes him beyond Justice [Samuel] Alito, and even beyond the late, great Justice Antonin Scalia. Thomas has been the most radical originalist in the best sense: willing to reconsider not only Warren Court inventions but also Progressive Era assumptions, New Deal compromises, and conservative half-measures.”

Thomas isn’t the lone defender of the Constitution on the Court.

He’s joined by Justice Alito, who has contributed to majority decisions protecting religious freedom, defended the right to keep and bear arms, and authored the 2022 majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. And a more recent addition to the Court’s conservative wing is Justice Neil Gorsuch. In a recent interview, Gorsuch opened up about the way he views the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and America’s semiquincentennial. His words send a hopeful message to those concerned about the future of the Court (and the country) after Thomas’s tenure ends.

Offering a broad perspective on America’s upcoming 250th birthday, Gorsuch explains, “It denotes that we’re on a journey, and that’s exactly how I think of our Declaration, right? I mean, those three big ideas in the Declaration that all of us are equal, that we all have unalienable rights that come from God, not from government, that we have the right to rule ourselves. I mean, those are perfect ideas. They speak to every soul; they exclude no one, but it’s a journey to realize those ideas. It’s been a journey, and it will always be a journey.”

Gorsuch deeply believes in America’s founding principles and in the obligation of each generation to pass on the torch of Liberty to the next.

“We forget that the revolution was eight bloody long years,” the justice explains. “A third of the signers had their homes destroyed. Many of them were imprisoned. Some of their wives were imprisoned. Some of their children were imprisoned. And many of them gave their fortunes to the revolution and died poor as a result of it.”

“So, telling those stories of courage and sacrifice, we hope might inspire a few young minds and make them realize the declaration’s three big ideas are not inevitable. They were not inevitable, and their preservation is not inevitable, and that the torch passes to each generation. We’re a creedal nation. What unites us is not a religion, it’s not a race; it’s a belief in those three ideals. That’s our mission statement as a country. And if the people don’t get inspired to learn about them and believe in them, the baton drops.”

Reflecting on some of the conservative justices on the Supreme Court offers a window into their individual character and their shared reverence for our nation’s founding principles, and serves as a reminder of why they were nominated in the first place. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch understand that the language in the Declaration and the Constitution embodies powerful ideals of limited government and liberty, worth protecting and defending for the next generation of Americans.