Glenn Murdock
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Glenn Murdock is a republican associate justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. He is one of nine justices serving on the court. He was first elected to a six-year term on the court in 2006; his current term expires in 2012.
Alabama is one of eight states that picks state supreme court justices in partisan elections; Murdock has run for the office as a Republican.
From 2001 to 2007, he served on the Court of Civil Appeals from 2001-2007.
Biography
Glenn Murdock was born in Enterprise, Alabama, on June 25, 1956. He is the oldest of three children of Billy A. Murdock and the late Marita Huey Murdock. Justice Murdock has been married for 28 years to the former Margaret Gilchrist of Hartselle, Alabama. They have three children, Emily, Bailey, and John Taylor, and they are active members of Covenant Presbyterian Church of Birmingham.[1]
Background
Legal education
Justice Murdock attended the University of Alabama, where he served as Student Government Vice President. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude in 1978, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Economics. He received his Juris Doctor degree in 1981 from the University of Virginia Law School.
Legal experience
Upon returning to Alabama, Murdock served for a year as a law clerk to the late Clarence W. Allgood, United District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama. Thereafter, he engaged in private practice, emphasizing commercial, constitutional, and election law. He also served as in-house counsel to a national corporation and as a State Administrative Law Judge. His practice included cases before the state and federal courts of Alabama, as well as the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 1994 and 1995, he served as an attorney to The Honorable Perry O. Hooper, Sr., in the successful year-long federal court litigation to establish the lawful winner of the 1994 Alabama Chief Justice election.
In 2000, Justice Murdock was elected to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, where he served from January 2001 to January 2007. He was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2006 and began serving on that Court in January 2007.[2]
Awards and associations
Justice Murdock is a member of the Rotary Club of Birmingham and the Birmingham and American Bar Associations.[3] He is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society and Rotary International.[4]
Campaign contributions
In his 2006 election to the Alabama Supreme Court, Murdock raised $1,607,185 total. Of the contributions by economic interest, the top three were:
- General Business, $828,100, or 51.52% of the total
- Lawyers and Lobbyists, $106,083, or 6.60%
- Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate, $97,500, or 6.07% of the total
For a complete summary of Glenn Murdock's 2006 election to the Supreme Court, visit Follow the Money: Glenn Murdock.
Murdock's judicial philosophy
In his campaign for Alabama Supreme Court, Glenn Murdock said his six years as a judge in the Court of Civil Appeals demonstrates he is independent of special-interest groups. As examples of his independent thinking, he mentioned decisions and dissenting opinions he wrote in the workers compensation area that opposed business arguments. One reason he wanted to be a Supreme Court justice is to make more meaningful changes, particularly in child custody and abuse cases. "You're dealing with innocent lives. They are a product of their experiences; they can't help who their parents are," Murdock said. "As a Supreme Court justice, I can tell the Court of Civil Appeals what to do." Murdock said his own judicial philosophy is "mainstream. ... I'm not going to jump over logical steps to get to a particular result." He said he is awed by the power of the court in our system of government. "Put a few ink marks on a piece of paper, and you avoid anarchy."[5]
Notable rulings
The botched abortion case
A woman in Alabama filed suit against Planned Parenthood of Alabama because she says her daughter—the result of an unsuccessful abortion—was born with a hole in her heart and an inverted tube leading from her lungs to her heart, "causing her body not to be able to receive enough oxygen." The suit was initially dismissed by a lower court, but upon appeal the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals has ruled that the woman can sue on behalf of herself and her child.
The woman went to Planned Parenthood in Birmingham to have an abortion, but the procedure was unsuccessful. She initially blamed the clinic only for her daughter being born, but when it became clear that the child had suffered health problems during the abortion, she decided to sue the clinic because of the botched abortion. Circuit Judge Robert Vance Jr. ruled in favor of the abortion clinic in the first hearing, and the appeals court agreed with him that the mother couldn’t sue on her own behalf. However, the judges said she can sue on behalf of her child, so that case is now proceeding. In the ruling, Judge Glenn Murdock wrote, "Neither the United States Supreme Court nor the Supreme Court of Alabama has ever ruled that a medical provider, or for that matter a mother, can engage, with some blanket of constitutional protection, in negligent or reckless conduct that deforms or injures a child so long as the deformity or injury is inflicted on the child before it leaves the womb." He continued by saying that if abortion clinics were allowed to operate "as carelessly or recklessly as they wish without bearing any responsibility" would be "a troubling development in our law."
Murdock also said that both state and federal Supreme Courts have not said that abortion clinics can "with some blanket of constitutional protection, in negligent or reckless conduct that deforms or injures a child so long as the deformity or injury is inflicted on the child before it leaves the womb." At the time, Murdock was running for the Alabama Supreme Court in the Republican primary.[6]
See also
External links
- Members of the Court
- Alabama Judicial System: Glenn Murdock
- Alabama Judicial System
- Alabama Court voids Adoption
- Follow the Money: Glenn Murdock
