MONTGOMERY, Ala. (ABP) — Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) named a replacement for deposed state Chief Justice Roy Moore June 22. Riley appointed his state finance director, Drayton Nabers, as the new head of the state's Supreme Court.
In November, a state judicial-ethics court removed Moore from office for his earlier defiance of a federal court order. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson had ordered Moore to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that he had placed in the rotunda of the state's judicial headquarters building.
Riley said he did not make the appointment lightly, but that a new chief justice was needed because of the election of new justices. “I believe the office of chief justice is too vitally important to be left vacant for an extended period of time,” he said, according to the Mongomery Advertiser newspaper. “Judge Moore's appeal process could take up to a year or more, and I do not believe that vacancy best serves the people of Alabama.”
Moore declined to comment on Riley's decision.
Nabers, a Birmingham native, has worked in state government, in the insurance industry, as an attorney and as a clerk to late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale University Law School.
“I would like to see a judicial system where every judge sees himself or herself as a servant of the people and never seeks to make law but only to apply the law laid down in our constitutions and statutes,” he said, according to the Advertiser.
Moore contends the Alabama Constitution required him to “acknowledge God,” and that the monument was a proper way to do so. His stance made him enormously popular among Alabamians and supporters of the Religious Right nationwide, but Riley and other state leaders distanced themselves from Moore, claiming his defiance threatened the integrity of the legal system.
Moore lost in two federal courts, and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. Moore also lost a bid to retain his job before a specially appointed Alabama Supreme Court. He has said he will appeal that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but most legal experts expect that body to turn Moore away again.
Alabama Supreme Court justices are elected to office, but state law allows the governor discretion to replace justices who do not fill out their terms. Nabers will fill out the two remaining years in Moore's term. However, nothing prevents Moore from running for his old office again.
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