The Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration was a conservative, religious organization formed in early 2005 that ran the website StopActivistJudges.org. By February 28, 2013, the domain had expired and been acquired by a domain parking company.
The council descended from the Dallas Group. Rick Scarborough took the chairman position. The council's executive director was Philip Jauregui, former counsel to Chief Justice Roy Moore. In April 2005, Scarborough was quoted as saying that his group was needed because of, "Activist judges...(whose) distortions of the Constitution have brought us abortion-on-demand, purged religious symbols from public places, made our schools faith-free zones, created a so-called right to homosexual sodomy and threatened 'one nation under God' in the pledge of allegiance. Now, judges seem intent on imposing same-sex marriage by fiat." [1] According to the group's website, "Each progressive step down the road to the secularization of America has come not through a referendum of the people, or an act of their elected representatives, but rather at the stroke of a judge’s pen." [2]
The group's April 2005 conference, Confronting The Judicial War On Faith, attracted many prominent conservatives. According to the Washington Post , "The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore; and [Rep. Tom] DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral." [3] The event brought together lawmakers and Capitol Hill staffers with theocrats, adherents of Christian Reconstructionism, a Calvinist doctrine that calls for the biblical law to rule American law. [4]
In a session titled "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny," constitutional lawyer Edwin Vieira discussed United States Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas , which struck down that state's anti-sodomy law. Kennedy was accused of relying on "Marxist, Leninist, Satanic principles drawn from foreign law" in his jurisprudence. [4]
According to the group's website, "April 7–8 proved to be a divine appointment. There was no way of knowing, humanly speaking, how significant that time would be in the life of our Republic"; Schiavo had died and "the federal judiciary, up to and including the United States Supreme Court, also turned a deaf ear to repeated pleas to save Terri." The group claims that the conference was responsible for creating "a movement... to restore the Constitution to its true meaning and original glory."
The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (FedSoc) is an American conservative and libertarian legal organization that advocates for a textualist and originalist interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has chapters at more than 200 law schools and features student, lawyer, and faculty divisions; the lawyers division comprises more than 70,000 practicing attorneys in ninety cities. Through speaking events, lectures, and other activities, it provides a forum for legal experts of opposing conservative views to interact with members of the legal profession, the judiciary, and the legal academy. It is one of the most influential legal organizations in the United States.
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults are unconstitutional. The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases had found the U.S. Constitution provides, even though it is not explicitly enumerated. It based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's own relationships and of American traditions of non-interference with any or all forms of private sexual activities between consenting adults.
The Terri Schiavo case was a series of court and legislative actions in the United States from 1998 to 2005, regarding the care of Theresa Marie Schiavo, a woman in an irreversible persistent vegetative state. Schiavo's husband and legal guardian argued that Schiavo would not have wanted prolonged artificial life support without the prospect of recovery, and, in 1998, he elected to remove her feeding tube. Schiavo's parents disputed her husband's assertions and challenged Schiavo's medical diagnosis, arguing in favor of continuing artificial nutrition and hydration. The highly publicized and prolonged series of legal challenges presented by her parents, which ultimately involved state and federal politicians up to the level of George W. Bush, the then U.S. president, caused a seven-year delay before Schiavo's feeding tube was ultimately removed.
The Alliance for Justice (AFJ) is a progressive judicial advocacy group in the United States. Founded in 1979 by former president Nan Aron, AFJ monitors federal judicial appointments. AFJ represents a coalition of 100 politically liberal groups that have an interest in the federal judiciary. The Alliance for Justice presents a modern liberal viewpoint on legal issues.
James David Whittemore is a senior United States district judge serving in the Tampa division of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida. He was previously a Florida state trial court judge, a federal public defender, and an attorney in private practice who won a criminal case before the United States Supreme Court. As a federal judge, Whittemore presided over a number of high-profile cases, including a lawsuit against Major League Baseball to challenge its draft procedure, and the Terri Schiavo case, after the United States Congress had specifically given the Middle District of Florida jurisdiction to hear the seven-year-long fight over whether the brain-damaged Schiavo should be taken off life support.
The Palm Sunday Compromise, formally known as the Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo, is an Act of Congress passed on March 21, 2005, to allow the case of Terri Schiavo to be moved into a federal court. The name "Palm Sunday Compromise" was coined by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, referring to it having been passed on Palm Sunday.
The legislative, executive, and judicial branches, of both the United States federal government and the State of Florida, were involved in the case of Terri Schiavo. In November 1998 Michael Schiavo, husband of Terri Schiavo, first sought permission to remove his wife's feeding tube. Schiavo had suffered brain damage in February 1990, and in February 2000 had been ruled by a Florida circuit court to be in a persistent vegetative state. Her feeding tube was removed first on April 26, 2001, but was reinserted two days later on an appeal by her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.
Barbara Joan Pariente is an attorney and jurist from Florida. She was chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court from July 1, 2004, until June 30, 2006. Pariente is the second woman to hold the position of chief justice and served on the court from 1997 to 2019. From 1993 to 1997 she was a judge on Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal.
William Holcombe Pryor Jr. is an American lawyer who has served as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit since 2020. He was appointed as a United States circuit judge of the court by President George W. Bush in 2004. He is a former commissioner of the United States Sentencing Commission. Previously, he was the attorney general of Alabama, from 1997 to 2004.
Judicial activism is a judicial philosophy holding that courts can and should go beyond the applicable law to consider broader societal implications of their decisions. It is sometimes used as an antonym of judicial restraint. The term usually implies that judges make rulings based on their own views rather than on precedent. The definition of judicial activism and the specific decisions that are activist are controversial political issues. The question of judicial activism is closely related to judicial interpretation, statutory interpretation, and separation of powers.
Anthony Richard Perkins is an American politician and Southern Baptist pastor, who has served as president of the Family Research Council since 2003. Previously, he was a police officer and television reporter. From 1996 to 2004, he served as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives. He unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2002. On May 14, 2018, he was appointed to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and on June 17, 2019, the Commission elected him Chairman.
The case of Terri Schiavo became the subject of intense public debate and activism.
Leonard Anthony Leo is an American lawyer and conservative legal activist. He was the longtime vice president of the Federalist Society and is currently, along with Steven Calabresi, the co-chairman of the organization's board of directors.
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to the Thomas More Law Center website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America."
On October 3, 2005, Harriet Miers was nominated for Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President George W. Bush to replace retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Miers was, at the time, White House Counsel, and had previously served in several roles both during Bush's tenure as Governor of Texas and President.
Roy Stewart Moore is an American politician, lawyer, and jurist who served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2013 to 2017, each time being removed from office for judicial misconduct by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. He was the Republican Party nominee in the 2017 U.S. Senate special election in Alabama to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions, but was accused by several women of sexually assaulting them while they were underage and lost to Democratic candidate Doug Jones. Moore ran for the same Senate seat again in 2020 and lost the Republican primary.
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988. After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.
The Foundation for Moral Law is a socially conservative, Christian right legal advocacy group based in Montgomery, Alabama.
Robert Leonard Schenck is an American Evangelical clergyman who has ministered to elected and appointed officials in Washington, D.C. and serves as president of a non-profit organization named for Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Schenck founded the organization Faith and Action in 1995 and led it until 2018. He is the subject of the Emmy Award-winning 2016 Abigail Disney documentary, The Armor of Light. Schenck stated that he was part of a group that paid Norma McCorvey to lie that she had changed her mind and turned against abortion. Once a prominent anti-abortion activist, Schenck has since repudiated this work and expressed support for the legality of abortion. In 2022, Schenck testified before the House Judiciary Committee concerning his allegation that a member of the Supreme Court leaked information about a pending case before the Court.
Tom Parker is an American lawyer serving as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court since 2019. He previously served as an associate justice on the court having been elected to that position in 2004 and re-elected in 2010.