Is This Really A War... Or Just More Ultra-Conservative Hogwash?

Alabama Judge Declares War on U.S. Supreme Court

Sitting calmly in his impeccably neat office at Alabama's Justice Building, state Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker does not look like a man at war with the U.S. Supreme Court.

But even before he says a word, his desk offers hints. Prominently displayed are Mark Levin's conservative attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, "Men in Black," and Phyllis Schlafly's "The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It."

The book Parker refers to the most, however, is a small one he pulls out of his pocket frequently during the conversation with a visiting reporter. It contains the texts of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and is signed by his hero, Justice Clarence Thomas, who swore him into office a year ago.

Last month, Parker wrote an op-ed in The Birmingham News, attacking the high court's "blatant judicial tyranny." The case that had gotten him roaring was the outcome in 2005's Roper v. Simmons, which tossed out the death penalty for inmates who were under 18 at the time of their crimes.

It was a blistering opening salvo in what Parker hopes will be a wide re-examination of the role of the Supreme Court ahead of the fight over the next vacancy. And despite a certain level of nomination fatigue in Washington, in Parker's view that vacancy can't come soon enough.

In the column, Parker called for what could be considered an act of judicial sedition. Because Roper was based, he wrote, on the application of foreign law (a notion its author, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would dispute), it was an "unconstitutional opinion" that his Alabama colleagues should "actively resist."

But instead, Parker's own court, obeying the Roper ruling, last year set aside the death penalty for convicted murderer Renaldo Adams, who was 17 when he raped and stabbed an Alabama woman.

The ultra-conservatives are always harping about judicial activism, but here we have an ultra-conservative judge sitting on the highest court in Alabama that is declaring an ideological war on the Supreme Court of the United States, casting aside legal principles, precedents and the US Constitution (especially the 14th Amendment) in the process.

But let us also look at the hypocrisy in Parker's views. He holds to the traditional "right to life" rhetoric, but advocates for the death penalty. I vote that he moves to Texas and takes his pals Scalia and Thomas with him... and then we fence them in as enemies of the Constitution, liberty and moral principle. Good thing there is a Constitution and I don't get to enforce such views... and I believe in the principles embodied in that document more than Parker, Scalia or Thomas.