Sunday, July 19, 2015

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Publishes Bombshell Opinion on Obama’s Birth Certificate

State Supreme Court Chief Justice Publishes Bombshell Opinion on Obama’s Birth Certificate


The chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court made headlines last week with a dissenting opinion in a case that dealt with President Barack Obama’s birth certificate — and you can imagine the left was somewhat uneasy.
The case, which dealt with Alabama’s obligation to verify birth certificates, was decided 7-to-2 against Alabama needing to certify whether a candidate was eligible.

However, in his dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Roy Moore said that the state of Alabama had every right to examine whether the president would be eligible to run.
“The complaint alleged that the Secretary of State failed to perform a constitutional duty to verify the eligibility of all presidential candidates appearing on the ballot in the 2012 general election,” Moore wrote in his opinion.
The official opinion, offered by Judge Mike Bolin, argued that Alabama’s secretary of state had no power to investigate the background of presidential candidates.
According to Bolin, the secretary of state is “a non-judicial office without subpoena power or investigative authority or the personnel necessary to undertake a duty to investigate a non-resident candidate’s qualifications, even if such a duty could properly be implied.”
Moore, however, strongly disagreed.
“A state law that required birth certificates from presidential candidates as a precondition to placement on the ballot would likely pass muster under federal preemption law,” Moore wrote.
“Such a law would not conflict with the Constitution, but would rather harmonize with the natural-born-citizen clause.”
Moore also said that “an executive officer of the State of Alabama … has an affirmative legal duty to recognize and support the United States Constitution as the supreme law of the land.” (H/T Western Journalism)
While the case was a victory for Obama, Moore’s opinion makes a strong case for the right of states to proactively investigate the credentials of presidential candidates, especially if a state were to pass such a law.
All that means that maybe next time, we’ll get to see the long form.

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