WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court returns from its winter break this month, it will hear two minor cases and reach a major anniversary. Unless something very surprising happens during the arguments that day, Justice Clarence Thomas will have gone 10 years without asking a question from the bench.

Maintaining a decade-long vow of silence takes monkish dedication and a certain stamina, and Justice Thomas has no modern competition. It has been at least 45 years since any other member of the court went even a single term without asking a question.

Justice Thomas’s explanations for his disengagement from this aspect of the court’s work have varied, but he seems to have settled on one in recent years. It is simply discourteous, he says, to pepper lawyers with questions.

“I think it’s unnecessary in deciding cases to ask that many questions, and I don’t think it’s helpful,” he said at Harvard Law School in 2013. “I think we should listen to lawyers who are arguing their cases, and I think we should allow the advocates to advocate.”