Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Huckabee Still Doesn’t Get Judicial Review

On Sunday, Mike Huckabee went on Fox News and Chris Wallace asked him, as he did last week with Ben Carson, about his claim that both state and federal officials are free to ignore the Supreme Court if they rule in favor of marriage equality next month. He offered up the usual gibberish:

Huckabee has said he would not follow a high court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, a matter the Court is expected to decide on imminently.

“Judicial review is exactly what we have lived under; we have not lived under judicial supremacy,” Huckabee said. “The Supreme Court can’t make a law; the legislature has to make it, the executive has to sign it and enforce it. The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with a ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is to equal branches of government.”

So how do you tell when it’s “judicial review” and when it’s “judicial supremacy”? Easy. If you agree with the ruling, it’s judicial review; if you don’t, it’s judicial supremacy. Can you imagine if President Obama had responded to the Hobby Lobby ruling by saying, “The Supreme Court can’t make a law; the legislature has to make it, the executive has to sign it and enforce it. The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with a ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is to equal branches of government” — and then continued to enforce the contraception mandate? Huckabee’s head would have exploded as he screamed TYRANNY! DICTATORSHIP! OBAMA IS DESTROYING AMERICA! HE’S COMMITTING EXECUTIVE TERRORISM!

There is no serious argument here, it’s just special pleading — if the Supreme Court agrees with us, we must follow it. If they don’t, that’s judicial tyranny and we must refuse to follow it.

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