For political discourse to function at all, competing sides have to agree on certain base facts. There has to be a reality that everyone can recognize before rivals can debate more sophisticated and complex questions.
For example, former [tag]Alabama[/tag] [tag]Supreme Court[/tag] Chief Justice [tag]Roy Moore[/tag] (R), who’s about to lose a Republican gubernatorial primary, insisted that he could defy the First Amendment whenever he wanted because the [tag]Bill of Rights[/tag] doesn’t apply to the [tag]states[/tag]. When a federal court judge told him otherwise, Moore said he could ignore him too, because federal courts didn’t have jurisdiction over his defiance of the First Amendment.
Moore, obviously, was in his own legal universe, and was ultimately thrown off the state Supreme Court in disgrace for his “unique” approach to jurisprudence. The bad news is four right-wing candidates running for Alabama’s Supreme Court are picking up where Moore left off.
In a debate with powerful echoes of the turbulent civil rights era, four Republicans running for Alabama’s Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars thought was settled in the 1800s: that state [tag]courts[/tag] are not bound by U.S. Supreme Court [tag]precedents[/tag].
The Constitution says federal law trumps state laws, and legal experts say there is general agreement that state courts must defer to the U.S. Supreme Court on matters of federal law.
Yet Justice Tom Parker, who is running for chief justice, argues that state judges should refuse to follow U.S. Supreme Court precedents they believe to be erroneous. Three other GOP candidates in Tuesday’s primary have made nearly identical arguments.
Now, this was a popular perspective in Alabama, and in other southern states, when federal courts struck down segregation in schools and public transportation 50 years ago, but it was wildly wrong then and it’s wildly wrong now. No serious professional could argue this with a straight face.
My broader point, however, is this: how do two sides have a reasoned argument when they can’t agree on reality?
We say there’s a constitutional separation between church and state, that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of constitutional interpretation, and that the Bill of Rights apply to the states. Roy Moore, Tom Parker, and a few other leading Alabama judicial candidates disagree with all of this.
It’s not just legal issues, either. Plenty of conservatives will tell you that Iraq was involved in 9/11, Bush inherited a recession, tax cuts pay for themselves, the list goes on and on.
There are countless legitimate controversies for which there is room for debate and discourse, but if we can’t agree on the basics, how do we debate the tough questions?