{"id":8180,"date":"2015-02-12T13:31:37","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T13:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8180"},"modified":"2015-02-12T13:31:37","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T13:31:37","slug":"alabamas-roy-moore-judicial-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8180","title":{"rendered":"Alabama&#039;s Roy Moore: judicial activist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Judicial activism is alive and well on one state&#8217;s bench, and it&#8217;s not a state where one would expect to find such a thing.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s in Alabama, where the chief justice of that state&#8217;s Supreme Court, has decided that the Highest Court in the Land &#8212; the United States Supreme Court &#8212; declined to overturn a lower federal court ruling that overturned the state&#8217;s ban on people marrying others of the same gender.<\/p>\n<p>The high court, then, in effect endorsed the lower court ruling. The state&#8217;s ban on same-sex marriage is overturned, along with bans in 38 other states &#8212; including Texas.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/opinion\/2015\/02\/10\/alabama-supreme-court-gay-marriage-editorials-debates\/23200975\/<\/p>\n<p>As USA Today notes in an editorial, same-sex marriage has become as divisive an issue as the civil rights battles were in the 1950s and &#8217;60s. Most Americans support same-sex marriage now, although in the Deep South, opponents of it remain in the majority.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the entire nation is governed by a single Constitution and the federal courts are empowered to interpret that document in the manner they deem appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>Federal judges have been striking down the bans generally on the grounds that they violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the one that guarantees &#8220;equal protection&#8221; for all citizens under the law.<\/p>\n<p>Justice Moore, though, doesn&#8217;t see it that way, even though he swore an oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t conservatives oppose judicial activism? Don&#8217;t they rail continually at judges who put their own bias above the law?<\/p>\n<p>Alabama&#8217;s top state judge is on the wrong side of this issue. Period.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Judicial activism is alive and well on one state&#8217;s bench, and it&#8217;s not a state where one would expect to find such a thing. It&#8217;s in Alabama, where the chief justice of that state&#8217;s Supreme Court, has decided that the Highest Court in the Land &#8212; the United States Supreme Court &#8212; declined to overturn &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=8180\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Alabama&#039;s Roy Moore: judicial activist<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[225,229,2597,2923,4037,4088,4954,4984],"class_list":["post-8180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","tag-alabama","tag-alabama-supreme-court","tag-judicial-activism","tag-marriage-equality","tag-roy-moore","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-u-s-constitution","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8180\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}