Tom Parker
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Tom Parker was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court as an associate justice in 2004. His current term expires in 2010.
Alabama is one of eight states that picks state supreme court justices in partisan elections; Parker has run for the office as a Republican.
Biography
Justice Parker and his wife, the former Dottie James of Auburn, have been married for 23 years. Dottie served as Supervisor of the Alabama Governor's Mansion during the administration of Alabama Governor Fob James. They are members of Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church.[1]
Legal Education and Experience
Parker graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, and received his Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University School of Law, in Nashville, Tennessee. He won a Rotary International Fellowship to study law at the University of Sao Paulo School of Law, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was the first foreign student in Brazil’s most prestigious law school.
Justice Parker served in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office under then Alabama Attorney General Jeff Sessions. As an Assistant Attorney General, he handled death penalty cases, criminal appeals, and constitutional litigation. He has extensive experience in writing appellate briefs and with oral arguments before the Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals. Previously, he was a partner in Parker & Kotouc, P.C., a Montgomery law firm that handled many high-profile constitutional cases.
He previously was the Deputy Administrative Director of Courts, where he served as General Counsel for the Alabama court system, advising trial court judges, and as the Director of the Alabama Judicial College, providing training for new judges and continuing legal education for all the trial judges in Alabama. He also served as the Legal Adviser to the Chief Justice.[2]
Awards and Associations
Tom Parker was founding Executive Director of the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute) and, later, the founding Executive Director for the Alabama Family Advocates, which were state organizations associated with Dr. James Dobson and Focus on the Family. He lobbied for family values in the Alabama Legislature. Parker has appeared on Focus on the Family, with Dr. James Dobson, The 700 Club, with Dr. Pat Robertson, the McNeil-Leher News Hour, For the Record, and numerous radio programs around the country.[3]
Political Affiliation and Campaign Contributions
Republican. In the 2006 election, Tom Parker raised $618,962. Of that, Lawyers and Lobbyists gave the most with $343,150, or 55.44%, General Business gave the next largest, with $164,500, or 26.58% of the total, and the third largest in giving was Ideology/Single Issue interests gave $81,352, or a total of 13.14%.[4] For a complete summary, please visit Follow the Money: Tom Parker 2006.
New Justice Parker slower than collegues
Republican Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, who is running for chief justice, has issued only one original written opinion since taking office in January 2005. Between January 2005 and January 2006, Parker ruled on one original appeal, but wrote no opinion. Since January this year, he has been the primary justice on three other appeals, records show. Parker’s sole written opinion, issued Feb. 24, was 14 pages. His other three rulings on original appeals did not contain written opinions. He has not ruled on 73 original cases. “Sooner or later, the court will have to do something and that would mean taking cases from him and redistributing to the other judges so people can get their cases heard and get cases out," said Justice Michael Bolin, who joined the court in January 2005 with Parker. Parker said it took him awhile to get up to speed partly because, unlike Bolin and Smith, he had not previously served as a judge and because he had to hire new staff members when he succeeded Brown. “Obviously, I had not been a judge like my colleagues and admittedly I was slow getting started. But that’s on the up tick," Parker said. “I also didn’t inherit a staff and had to hire and train them." According to the Alabama Supreme Court clerk’s office, as of Friday, Parker had 73 original appeal cases pending -- 33 he inherited from Brown and 44 that were assigned since he took office, minus the four cases he dispensed with. According to Supreme Court clerk records, Parker had the highest average number of days that cases were pending in his office -- 256. Justice Tom Woodall’s average case hold was 61 days, the lowest of the nine justices. “They’ll get justice," Bolin said of Parker’s 73 pending cases, “but it may be delayed."[5]
Alabama Judge Declares War on U.S. Supreme Court
Last month, Parker wrote an op-ed in The Birmingham News, attacking the high court's "blatant judicial tyranny," speaking on 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. 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 notion its author, Justice Anthony Kennedy, would dispute), it was an "unconstitutional opinion" that his Alabama colleagues should "actively resist." Reaction to Parker's shot across the bow was swift. His fellow justice Michael Bolin told the Associated Press that Parker's column was "an unprecedented attack by a member of the Supreme Court on each fellow justice and an attack on the court as an institution." Bolin hinted that Parker had violated a state canon of judicial ethics that states judges should promote confidence in the judiciary. More than a month later, Parker now says no ethics complaint has been filed and his relations with his colleagues are as collegial as they were before the column appeared. Bolin's comments were made "in the heat of emotion, but they don't play out over time," Parker says, adding that he had "strong conversations" with all of his colleagues about the column. [6]
2004 election transforms Supreme Court
Alabama elected Republican Tom Parker, a former aide to ousted Chief Justice Roy Moore, even after Parker told The Associated Press two weeks before the election that he recently attended a party commemorating the birthday of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan. [7]
See Also
External Links
- Alabama Judicial System Online: Tom Parker
- Alabama Judicial System
- Alabama Judge Declares War on U.S. Supreme Court
- Members of the Court
- Parker wins Republican primary
- Supreme Court rules 5-4 that State Bar can't reprimand Judge DuBose
- Justice Parker slower than collegues
- Follow the Money: Tom Parker
- Spending in Races
