Going Further

From Senator Ted Cruz, a timely, authoritative exploration of Clarence Thomas’s life, ideas, and lasting impact on constitutional law

For over three decades, Clarence Thomas has stood at the center of American law, enduring withering criticism and personal attacks while writing some of the most brilliant, accessible, transformational opinions in the Supreme Court’s history. His insistence that the Constitution, not merely judicial precedent, is the highest authority has reshaped American jurisprudence, and his lasting impact on the trajectory of constitutional law is undeniable.

In this powerful and timely book, Senator Ted Cruz draws on his own Supreme Court clerkship, on his many years as a Supreme Court advocate, and on his now decades-long friendship with Justice Thomas to paint a portrait of one of the most consequential—and misunderstood—Americans in our nation’s history. Drawing on nine hours of exclusive, wide-ranging, and deeply personal one-on-one interviews with the Justice, Cruz reveals how Thomas’s most formative early experiences—like growing up in crushing poverty in segregated Georgia, his early encounters with extreme racism, and his brief stint in radical left-wing politics—forged a lifelong commitment to independence, self-reliance, and truth.


From Thomas’s early years studying to be a priest to his role today as the intellectual force behind some of the Court’s most significant decisions, Going Further traces the formation of one of our Constitution’s staunchest defenders and makes a rousing argument why his life, his ideas, and his courage matter now more than ever.