Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee railed against the power of the Supreme Court Sunday and criticized what he called the court’s “judicial supremacy.”
“The Supreme Court cannot make a law,” Huckabee said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. “The legislature has to make it. The executive branch has to sign it.”
Huckabee, who announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination earlier this month, said the present deference to the Supreme Court’s power “defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government.”
“The Supreme Court isn’t the supreme branch,” he said.
Huckabee has been a critic of the court’s decision to take up same-sex marriage rights and has used the controversial case to bolster his evangelical stance in favor of traditional marriage.
Other 2016 hopefuls have joined Huckabee in questioning the Supreme Court’s power to overhaul laws.
Ben Carson, a fellow announced GOP candidate, pointed to an infamous case involving slavery to illustrate his point that the judiciary may be abusing its authority to interpret laws.
“Dred Scott is a perfect example,” Carson told Wallace earlier this month. “The Supreme Court came up with this and Abraham Lincoln did not agree with it. Now, admittedly it caused a lot of conflict and eventually led to a Civil War, but we’re in a better place because of it.”
Carson said the idea of judicial review “is an area that we need to discuss” because the concept of allowing the courts to decide whether laws are constitutional “has changed from the original intent.”
