Alabama Still Has Bad Judges

When you elect judges, you get what you deserve rather than the best, and apparently Alabama's electorate doesn't deserve much. They elected Justice Tom Parker. What does Justice Parker have to say about how the Alabama Supreme Court should conduct its business in a newspaper editorial? He thinks that it should ignore binding U.S. Supreme Court precedent on the execution of juvenile offenders.

Were those who voted for Justice Parker deceived before they cast their vote? This is unlikely. "Mr. Parker is a protege of former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who was booted from office for defying a federal judge." Maybe the National Guard needs to take control as it did in 1963 in the face of another Alabama elected official who ignored the law. (Then again, the Alabama National Guard didn't distinguish itself when it was sheltering an AWOL George W. Bush a few years later.) Less radically, maybe electing judges is just fundamentally a bad idea.