After a judicial ethics committee removed Chief Justice Roy Moore from the Alabama Supreme Court for his defense of a two-ton Ten Commandments monument in the court's rotunda, the renegade judge's name would seem to hold little clout. But in this year's race for positions on the bench, Thomas Parker '73 -- along with many other Republican candidates -- is banking on Moore's legacy.
Although the ex-chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court has not officially endorsed anyone, Parker, Moore's former legal adviser, is attempting to appeal to conservative Christians angered by the other eight justices' decision to yield to federal courts. The Republican primary is set for Tuesday.
"I think there's a good possibility of a voter turnout of people angry about what happened to Moore in 2003," Parker said.
Moore supports Parker based on both his personal relationship with him and his support for his position. He believes the Court's current position "doesn't vaguely resemble what was intended by the founding fathers," Parker said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Even Moore's Republican primary opponent for the first associate justice seat, Justice Jean Brown, is trying to play down her acquiescence to the federal courts. In her campaign commercial, she highlights a recently added exhibition to the courthouse's rotunda, which displays the Ten Commandments alongside other historical documents, such as the Magna Carta.
However, Parker expressed skepticism about whether the commercial would hold any legitimacy in the public's eyes.
"I don't think Jean would be able to pacify voters. The public's not buying it and she's pulled the ad presenting the display," Parker said.
In fact, Parker launched his own set of commercials attacking Brown. In one, an announcer asks, "Who can Alabama conservatives trust? She removed the Ten Commandments and insulted us with her politically correct, ACLU-approved display."
The justices of the Alabama's Supreme Court have paralleled a larger switch in the South from a Democrat-dominated region to a Republican-dominated one. In 1993, the court was composed entirely of Democrats, but now has only one Democratic justice.
In addition to simply following larger trends, Parker sees the court's switch as an outcry from the people against large jury awards approved by plaintiff-lawyer-backed Democratic justices.
"We had Democrat-backed plaintiff lawyers causing excessive jury awards and the community said 'enough,'" Parker said.
Because Alabama is one of nine states that hold partisan elections for Supreme Court seats, Parker said its elections are often highly funded battles between business-backed Republicans and plaintiff lawyer-backed Democrats. In the past decade, Alabama Supreme Court candidates have managed to raise $33.7 million.
Parker arrived on a turbulent campus in 1969. The Kent State shooting shut down Dartmouth, and during his years here, student government had abolished itself in protest. Despite these distractions, Parker graduated in 1973 as a history major with a focus on Latin America. He attended the Vanderbilt University law program and spent a year studying at the Sao Paulo School of Law on a graduate fellowship.
Parker spent his next four years in the attorney general's office prosecuting utility regulation cases. He then established the law firm of Parker and Cotouc, where he worked for 13 years. During that time, he fought for school prayer in the Wallace v. Jaffree case, but ultimately lost when the Supreme Court decided that Alabama law -- which required a moment of "silent meditation or voluntary prayer" at the start of each day -- was unconstitutional. He then returned to the Alabama attorney general's office doing general appeal and capital litigation.
Parker is only one of three Supreme Court candidates who are running at least partially based on their support for Moore.
