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.

[1] 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.

[7] 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.

[10] 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.

"[11] 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.

"[11] 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;[12] 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.

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.

[23] 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.

[26] 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.

[25] 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).

[3] It was shortly after the president selected Thomas as his nominee that Democratic committee staffers began hearing rumors that Thomas had in the past sexually harassed one or more women, and in early September that committee chairman Joe Biden asked the Bush White House to authorize an FBI investigation into Hill's charges.

[32] After Totenberg's story aired, Biden quickly came under pressure to reopen the hearings from House Democratic women[32] and from various groups that had opposed the Thomas nomination earlier in the process.

She said she was testifying as to the character and fitness of Thomas to serve on the high court and was ambivalent about whether his alleged conduct had in fact risen to the level of being illegal sexual harassment.

"[39] Hill provided lurid details about Thomas's alleged inappropriate behavior at the Department of Education: "He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes ...On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess ... and made embarrassing references to a porn star by the name of Long Dong Silver".

[47]Senator Orrin Hatch asked Thomas his response to Hill's graphic claims inquiring: "[D]id you ever say in words or substance something like there is a pubic hair in my Coke?"

"[53] Additionally, Phyllis Berry-Myers, another special assistant to Thomas, said that he "was respectful, demand[ing] of excellence in our work, cordial, professional, interested in our lives and our career ambitions".

[54] Nancy Altman who worked with Hill and Thomas at the Department of Education testified that, "It is not credible that Clarence Thomas could have engaged in the kinds of behavior that Anita Hill alleges, without any of the women who he worked closest with – dozens of us, we could spend days having women come up, his secretaries, his chief of staff, his other assistants, his colleagues – without any of us having sensed, seen or heard something.

"[55] Senator Alan K. Simpson was puzzled by why Hill and Thomas met, dined, and spoke by phone on various occasions after they no longer worked together.

[59][60] Eight days after winning confirmation, on October 23, Thomas took the prescribed constitutional and judicial (set by federal law) oaths of office, and became the 106th member of the court.

"[65] Foskett elaborates: Bullying a woman simply wasn't in Thomas's nature and ran contrary to how he conducted himself around others in a professional environment.

"[66] Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, reporters for The Wall Street Journal, wrote an article for the May 24, 1993, issue of The New Yorker challenging David Brock's assertions.

[69] However, according to Jeffrey Toobin, because Thomas was already sworn in by the time the video store evidence emerged, The Washington Post dropped the story.

[70] Conservatives like John O'Sullivan panned the book, while liberals such as Mark Tushnet praised it, saying it established "that Clarence Thomas lied" during the hearings.

[71] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times called the book character assassination: "I don't care if Clarence Thomas had an inflatable doll on his sofa and a framed autograph from Long Dong Silver on the wall.

"[72] David Brock wrote an article titled "The Real Anita Hill" for the 1992 The American Spectator magazine and a 1993 book of the same name, arguing against her veracity.

In his 2003 book titled Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative he said that he had "lied in print to protect the reputation of Justice Clarence Thomas".

[76] He wrote: On Sunday morning, courtesy of Newsday, I met for the first time an Anita Hill who bore little resemblance to the woman who had worked for me at EEOC and the Education Department.

"[77] Showtime dramatized the confirmation hearing in Strange Justice, a television film starring Delroy Lindo as Thomas and Regina Taylor as Hill, first aired August 29, 1999.

HBO dramatized the Senate hearing in Confirmation, a television film starring Kerry Washington as Hill and Wendell Pierce as Thomas, first aired April 16, 2016.