Um, the civil war is over

This article is nuts.

It's a story of those running for the Alabama Supreme Court (aside: this is why judges should never be elected.) Recall that Alabama is also the home of Roy "Ten Commandments" Moore, whose smackdown by the 11th Circuit ("If necessary, the court order will be enforced. The rule of law will prevail.") still gets me hard.

Anyway. He's running for governor, but scarier are those running for the Court. Four of the candidates have this crazy idea that the Alabama Supreme Court (and, indeed, any state court) should not be obligated to follow the Federal Supreme Court when it doesn't want to (in their words, when the U.S. Supreme Court is wrong).

Recall, of course, that this is what the southern savages tried during desegregation - saying that the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown was wrong and that they didn't have to follow it.

Um. I don't think there's a serious legal mind in the country who actually thinks that this view is correct. I did a quick poll here at work, and while of course I work for an ultra-liberal law firm's ultra-liberal office in an ultra-liberal city (well, as ultra-liberal as you can be while representing major oil companies), I didn't find a single person who didn't burst out laughing. Comments ranged from "um, didn't we settle this in the civil war?" to "if Alabama elects them and they turn the state back to the dark ages, who cares?"

The Supreme Court is law - and even though we may not like the decisions, we obey them.

But the message here is very Moore-esque: If you don't like the law, you don't have to follow it.