Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has maintained a remarkable silence since joining the Court in 1991.

According to Mark Sherman, Thomas has spoken exactly 281 words from the bench since October 2004, when court transcripts began to identify justices by name. And his last known utterance occurred Feb. 22, 2006, in a question concerning a death penalty case.

Thomas is a native speaker of Geechee (pronounced "geezee"), the Georgia form of Gullah. So he says he developed the habit of listening rather than speaking in that once-despised creole. The problem, of course, is to know whether he understands what's being said.

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