Alabama's Renegade Judge Defies Gay Marriage Order
Jan 28, 2015 10:56 AM EST
By Noah Feldman
Maybe you remember Roy Moore? He’s the chief justice of Alabama who, in 2001, ordered the erection of a 5,200 pound granite copy of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court -- then refused to remove it in 2003 after a federal court ruled it unconstitutional. On Tuesday, while the Northeast was covered in snow, Moore was at it again. He sent the Alabama governor a letter asserting that Alabama judges aren’t bound by the federal district court decision requiring issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples in the state.
Moore’s idiosyncratic view isn’t completely crazy -- but it is dangerously wrong. And it’s especially important to show why it’s wrong, because Southern states’ rights fundamentalism has a long and bad history of challenging federal constitutional decisions in the context of segregation.
Moore himself is a one-man proof of my contention last week that judicial elections are idiotic. After his last episode of resisting federal-court orders stating that he had violated the establishment clause, Moore was actually removed from his position as chief justice by a special Alabama court that investigates judicial malfeasance.
After that, Moore twice ran for governor of Alabama, hoping to capitalize on his notoriety. When he failed to make it out of the Republican primary either time, Moore hit on the idea of running for chief justice again -- and in 2012 he was re-elected to the post from which he had been removed. He’s now sitting chief justice of Alabama. Anyone care to tell me again why judicial elections are so great?
The last time he resisted a federal court order, Moore made himself a kind of martyr for the Ten Commandments: He’d ordered the monument (I almost wrote “idol”) put up unilaterally, and he did everything short of standing in the way of the bulldozer sent to remove it.
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-28/renegade-alabama-judge-roy-moore-defies-gay-marriage-order
