A valid question for Alabama voters to ask as they go to the polls today is which of the two candidates in the GOP primary, Luther Strange or Roy Moore, is a better friend of the Constitution.
Here is the oath every U.S. senator must take before casting a single vote on legislation (emphasis mine):
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
All a voter has to do to get an answer to the question is to evaluate their respective responses to the egregiously bad Obergefell ruling in which the Supreme Court presumed to issue a diktat to the entire country on same-sex marriage.
Strange, as the attorney general of Alabama at the time, did not fight this ruling but instead folded like a cheap Bedouin tent in a stiff desert breeze.
The Constitution Strange took an oath to uphold says unambiguously in Article I that “all legislative power shall be vested in Congress.” How much legislative power does that leave to the Supreme Court? Precisely zero.
The Supreme Court has no authority whatsoever to make law. Their rulings are binding on the plaintiffs and defendants before them, as is the case in every courtroom in America. But their rulings have no binding power beyond the parties who appear before them.
Abraham Lincoln understood this, which is why he accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott as it applied to Scott and his owner. But Lincoln refused to accept that the Scott ruling had any binding precedential impact on the rest of the nation.
Mr. Strange, unfortunately, fell all over himself to declare that Obergefell was “the law of the land,” and meekly surrendered the express will of the people of Alabama to their tyrannical, unelected, and unaccountable judicial overlords.
Roy Moore, on the other hand, refused to accept the myth that Supreme Court rulings make law. He accepted the Court’s authority with regard to the sixteen plaintiffs who were before the Court, but flatly refused to accept that the Court’s ruling was binding on Alabama. After all, he said, Alabama was not a defendant in the Obergefell case, was not in the courtroom, and was never given an opportunity to defend its state constitution.
Moore was famously removed from office by a kangaroo court, but never budged in his fidelity to both the United States Constitution and the constitution of the state of Alabama.
Bottom line: Judge Roy Moore lost his job for keeping his oath of office. Luther Strange kept his job by betraying it.
