Last week, a draft opinion of the Supreme Court leaked that says the majority of the court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The leaker has yet to be identified.
Many Republicans in Congress reacted to the leak with concern about the future integrity of the institution.
U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Huntsville), who is also a candidate for the U.S. Senate, had a slightly different reaction. While Brooks acknowledged the leaker broke a confidentiality or employment agreement, he argued the process of the Supreme Court should be more open to the public in the first place.
Friday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” Brooks discussed the ramifications of the leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court.
“I believe the people’s business ought to be done in public, and this is the people’s business,” he argued. “You expect your legislative bodies, we senators and congressmen — we debate these things publicly, where the public can see the pros and cons of the issues that we advance. You see it in the executive branch where you have, at least for a little bit longer, Psaki on a regular basis explaining to the American people why the executive branch is doing what they’re doing, and I don’t know why the third branch of government, the Supreme Court, should be so secretive, doing things clandestinely instead of openly in the public.”
Brooks said as one of the branches of federal government, the Supreme Court still had a responsibility to the people.
“They are the third branch of government,” he explained. “They are supposed to be responsive to the law as it is written and to the people of the United States of America. We congressmen and senators, we get people communicating with us on a regular basis. We’re still supposed to pass laws that are in the best interest of the United States.”
The Senate candidate said he wanted to see more transparency in how the Supreme Court made decisions.
“Now if the Supreme Court doesn’t want to interact with the general public that’s one thing,” he continued, “but they still have a responsibility to the people of the United States of America to disclose their process, their thinking that results in the decisions that they ultimately meet down. So I like that kind of discourse, I like that kind of debate if it was open to the public”
Brooks agreed that abortion should be left up to the states and not decided by the courts.
“To me, that is a decision that is best left up under the 10th Amendment to the states,” he said. “That is a states rights issue. And to be the Roe v. Wade court in 1973 should never have made up law. They should never have interjected themselves. In a republic, it’s your elected officials who are supposed to make policy, not judges.”
Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee
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