Tom Parker is an American lawyer and judge. He is the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court winning election in November, 2018. He previously served as an Associate Justice on the court having been elected to that position in 2004 and re-elected in 2010.
In 1989, Parker became the founding executive director of the Alabama Family Alliance, a conservative think tank. At other points in his career, Parker was an Alabama assistant attorney general, deputy administrative director of Alabama courts; general counsel for Alabama trial courts; and director of the Alabama Judicial College. Parker was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court as an associate justice in 2004 and was re-elected in 2010. He unsuccessfully ran for chief justice in 2006. A longtime ally of Roy Moore, he is known for his conservative views. He strongly opposes Roe v. Wade and has written a number of anti-abortionjudicial opinions. Parker opposes same-sex marriage and has criticized the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. In 2006, Parker wrote an op-ed, published in The Birmingham News, in which he criticized his colleagues on the state supreme court for a ruling the previous year in which the court reversed a death sentence for a 17-year-old convicted of murder, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons. In the op-ed, Parker criticized the Roper decision as "blatant judicial tyranny" and asserted that "State supreme courts may decline to follow bad U.S. Supreme Court precedents because those decisions bind only the parties to the particular case." The claim was criticized by legal experts because it contravenes the accepted principle of American jurisprudence that the U.S. Supreme Court has ultimate authority on matters of federal law. Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor criticized Parker's op-ed in a Wall Street Journal commentary, writing that it was an inappropriate attack on fellow judges and was at odds with the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Parker currently sits on the Board of Jurists at the , at Faulkner University. On June 5, 2018 Parker won the Republican nomination for Chief Justice over incumbent Chief Justice Lyn Stuart, although seven current and former Alabama Supreme Court justices publicly supported Stuart over Parker in the primary. Parker went on to defeat the Democratic nominee, Circuit Judge Bob Vance, in the general election on November 6, 2018. The campaign was marked by negative television advertising in which Parker's campaign ran ads accusing Vance of being backed by "leftist billionaires" and in which Vance's campaign ran ads saying that Parker was "another Roy Moore" who would bring more "chaos and controversy" to Alabama. He was sworn in as Chief Justice of Alabama on January 11, 2019.
