Perhaps you can explain this to me... what is the value of oral arguments at all?
The justices get vast piles of paper documents, extensive briefs, case histories, etc etc etc. The oral arguments are generally given only a single hour; if I remember correctly the PPACA was given a whopping afternoon. These are complex issues; a case doesn't reach the Supreme Court unless there is genuine disagreement among very high level legal minds. They will proceed to hash it out among themselves and with their clerks, for many hours.
Is anything actually achieved by oral arguments? It seems mainly an opportunity for lawyers to get flustered, choose the wrong tack while thinking on their feet, be manipulated by the justices, and oversimplify.
Is Thomas' silence really a comment on the fact that this is a waste of his, and everybody else's, time?
I'm asking this in all seriousness. I'm not a lawyer and I wouldn't presume to tell them how to do their business. But as an outsider, I find this perplexing.