The next step in judicial conservatism…
By Sean Aqui | Related entries in Elections, Law, News, Supreme Court…. is to re-argue case law that has been settled for more than 100 years.
Well, actually, it’s not so much re-arguing as simply ignoring precedents that one doesn’t like.
In a debate with powerful echoes of the turbulent civil rights era, four Republicans running for Alabama’s Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars thought was settled in the 1800s: that state courts are not bound by
U.S. Supreme Court precedents.The Constitution says federal law trumps state laws, and legal experts say there is general agreement that state courts must defer to the U.S. Supreme Court on matters of federal law.
Yet Justice Tom Parker, who is running for chief justice, argues that state judges should refuse to follow U.S. Supreme Court precedents they believe to be erroneous. Three other GOP candidates in Tuesday’s primary have made nearly identical arguments.
“State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are ‘precedents,’” Parker wrote in a newspaper opinion piece in January that was prompted by a murder case that came before the Alabama high court.
Yeah, why, if everybody followed precedents you’d have… uh… a consistent body of law.
It might dismay you to learn that Parker currently sits on the Alabama Supreme Court. But it will surprise you not at all to learn that Parker is a former aide to Roy Moore, who was forced to resign as Alabama’s chief justice in 2003 over a Ten Commandments monument he had secretly installed in his courthouse.
Loons.
(crossposted from Midtopia)
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 and is filed under Elections, Law, News, Supreme Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 1st, 2006 at 3:57 pm
He’s not just saying that just because he believes it. He is saying it because the majority of people in the state believe it. In Alabama, evangelism overrides the constitution and the “civil war” is call “the war of northern aggression”. Boy do I hate living here. On the other hand taxes are really low.
June 1st, 2006 at 5:13 pm
I almost hope he gets elected just so we can all enjoy the spectacle. It’d be the first time in decades that federal troops were called in to enforce Supreme Court rulings.
June 1st, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Maybe Alabama will secede.
June 1st, 2006 at 11:20 pm
Well, this is lunacy.
But it does not approach the lunacy of the 9th circuit court (the people who brought you Newdow’s attempted pledge banning, and the one that said parents have no right to decide what their children are exposed to in public schools.), the most overturned court in the history of the US court system.
Are some supreme court rulings ridiculous? Yes. I’m thinking of one in particular that is still justified by a 1973 understanding of medicine and a 7th century understanding of inalienable rights. However, for the sake of consistency in the court system, the states have to obey federal rulings where applicable.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 am
Brian, I’ll point out that it’s easy to support the rule of law when the rulings favor your policy preferences - so I commend you for recognizing the legitimacy of rulings which you find disagreeable.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:52 am
Agreed: clearly there are Supreme Court rulings that are badly founded — though we’ll all disagree on which ones they are. But, good or bad, they’re the law until the Supreme Court itself overturns them. Otherwise we risk legal anarchy.
June 7th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
So here’s the scenario: the Alabama court makes a decision disregarding U.S. Supreme Court precedent; the U.S. Supreme Court summarily reverses that decision, on grounds of selfsame precedent. Now what? Ignoring precedent of a higher court is one thing, defying its orders is something else. Does anyone think these Alabama jokers would have the courage to do that? At the crunch they would back down, they know it, and therefore they will never press it to that point. They won’t in fact disregard U.S. Supreme Court rulings, no matter what they tell the voters. This is phony defiance, like George Wallace standing for ten seconds in the schoolhouse door. It’s an Alabama tradition!