Sitting calmly in his impeccably neat office at Alabama's Justice Building, state Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker does not look like a man at war with the U.S. Supreme Court.
Last month, Parker wrote an op-ed in The Birmingham News, attacking the high court's "blatant judicial tyranny." The case that had gotten him roaring was the outcome in 2005's Roper v. Simmons, which tossed out the death penalty for inmates who were under 18 at the time of their crimes.
It was a blistering opening salvo in what Parker hopes will be a wide re-examination of the role of the Supreme Court ahead of the fight over the next vacancy. And despite a certain level of nomination fatigue in Washington, in Parker's view that vacancy can't come soon enough.
In the column, Parker called for what could be considered an act of judicial sedition. Because Roper was based, he wrote, on the application of foreign law (a...