Affidavit of Forrest H. “Fob” James Jr.

1. I am a citizen of the United States and the State of Alabama. I had the privilege of serving as Governor of Alabama twice.

2. One of the primary reasons I ran for Governor in 1994 was a forty-year pattern of illegal acts by the U.S. Supreme Court. Forbidding pre-game prayer by young athletes, the removal of the 10 commandments from the schools, and the ever-expanding grab for power by the courts, especially the federal courts, concerned me. I repeatedly spoke on these matters throughout my campaign. The so-called “equity funding” case in Alabama was an example of judicial arrogance on the home front that I also vigorously opposed as a candidate for Governor in 1994.

3. In my second term I had the good fortune to have Jeff Sessions as Attorney-General for a time. After he was elected to the U.S. Senate, he recommended to me a young man from Mobile named Bill Pryor to replace him. I remember talking with Bill about Judge Brevard Hand, a federal judge also from Mobile. Bill spoke highly of Judge Hand and if I remember correctly, a decision the Judge had made in the Jaffree school prayer case in Mobile during my first term as Governor. Judge Hand had ruled in that case that the U.S. Supreme Court was misusing the legal system to achieve its own social agenda, while usurping authority granted only to the legislative branches of government. As Judge Hand wrote, “We must give no future generation an excuse to use the same tactic to further their ends which they think proper under the then political climate as for instance did Adolph Hitler when he used the court system to further his goals.” I later asked the Judge to swear me in as Governor for a second term in 1995, which he graciously did. The main part of my inauguration in January, 1995, was an historical festival with actors playing the parts of historical figures like George Washington warning of “change by usurpation” in our government.

4. I paid more attention to what Washington and Jefferson and Jackson and Lincoln said about the checks and balances in our legal system, especially as it relates to checking the power of the judiciary, than to ambitious and dishonest judges we saw in the 20th century. I talked with Bill Pryor about all this when I was considering him for the job of Alabama Attorney-General. He impressed me with his knowledge of these things and provided me with some legal papers on “nonacquiescence” that he was responsible for while at the Tulane Law School. I told Bill about my view that constitutional officials needed to challenge the Supreme Court. For instance, for twenty years my view has been that a Governor should refuse to allow enforcement of a patently unconstitutional court order, and force the president to take action one way or the other on the issue. I don’t mean that we should fight anyone with troops. I do mean that we should use our constitutional authority to force the great issue of the day into the provinces of all branches of the federal government, not just a judiciary that like to sweep everything under its own rug where it has nearly exclusive control. Bill Pryor was aware of my views when I appointed him, because we discussed these things. Bill had indicated nothing, but his wholehearted support of my position and these issues at the time.

5. I have now heard that Bill Pryor is prosecuting Roy Moore before the Court of the Judiciary for refusing to obey a federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments from the State Judicial Building. If this is true, Bill’s action today are utterly contrary to the political and legal convictions he expressed to me. Had he expressed his present view, I would not have found him qualified to be Attorney-General of Alabama. The main reason Pryor was appointed was his understanding, and the ability to express that understanding, well, that a public official’s highest duty was to the Constitution of the United States and not to the Supreme Court or any other entity.

 

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