On Public Discourse, law professor John C. Eastman persuasively explains that in the ongoing battle between Alabama chief justice Roy Moore and federal district judge Callie Granade over Alabama’s marriage laws, “Moore and his fellow justices … have by far the better argument.” For starters, Granade’s ruling, which isn’t even binding precedent in her district, doesn’t bind the state courts, nor does her order, even in its belatedly amended version, apply to probate judges outside her district. Further:

The big irony for those accusing Chief Justice Moore and his fellow justices of ignoring the allegedly binding effect of the lower federal court order is that the lower federal court itself refused to follow US Supreme Court precedent—precedent that is as binding on that lower federal court as it is on Alabama Supreme Court and Alabama county probate judges.

As Eastman points out, the much bigger question is down the road: whether Alabama judges, as well as other public officials throughout the country, will acquiesce in “a decision of the US Supreme Court wrongly interpreting the Constitution to mandate a nationwide redefinition of marriage.”