Here is the latest saga in political judges. Roy Moore, Chief
Justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court campaigned to openly defy federal law on marriage equality. He
was removed from the Chief Justice position in 2003 after he ordered the Ten
Commandments to be placed in the high court’s assembly area.
No worries,
because in Alabama—just as an Illinois— the people elect judges. (I interject
to note that since the 1950s, the Illinois State Bar Association and Chicago
Bar Association have advocated for merit selection of judges, chosen by a body
of judges, lawyers and non-lawyer citizens.)
So, Roy Moore was elected again to the post from which he
was banished.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that gay and lesbian
adults have a constitutional right to marry, Chief Justice Moore began advising
county probate judges to ignore federal court rulings and refuse to marry
same-sex couples.
On Friday, Alabama’s statewide judicial ethics commission proposed
to immediately fire the Chief Justice for disobeying the law, and failing to
comply with a federal injunction.
No sneers for Alabama—they have an effective judicial
commission that does its job. If Chief Justice Moore was in Illinois, he’d face
the weakest state judicial ethics commission—a commission that has left four of
its thirteen board seats vacant for as long as three years! (Photo shows 5,300 pound monument that sat in the Alabama supreme court until a federal judge ordered its removal.)
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