THE outcome was not quite so definitive as Roy Moore’s critics had demanded or as, in his secret heart, the man himself may have expected. In a ruling issued today by Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary (COJ), following a hearing last week, the state’s chief justice was suspended without pay for the remainder of his term of office. That does not have quite the dramatic, biblical overtones of removing him altogether, a verdict that would have conjured images of a righteous, berobed figure being dragged by heathens from the bench. But it is the end of Mr Moore’s long, grandstanding judicial career all the same.
Removal, remember, was the punishment that curtailed his first stint as Alabama’s chief justice in 2003 (he was re-elected in 2012). On that occasion he installed a granite monument to the ten commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building, then defied a federal court’s instruction to remove it. This time the complaint, initially brought by the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), a watchdog, stemmed from his rear-guard recalcitrance over same-sex marriage. The legal manoeuvring was complex; but, in essence, he counselled Alabama’s probate judges,...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2dxwde0
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