Hours after the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage on Friday, Republican presidential aspirant Ted Cruz said he will push for an amendment to the American Constitution to allow high court justices to be voted out during elections every eight years.
In a scathing opinion article published in the National Review on the same day, Cruz said the Supreme Court subjected the US to "some of the darkest 24 hours in the nation's history" after its rulings legalising President Barack Obama's key healthcare reform initiative called "Obamacare," and gay marriages nationwide.
"Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple. Both were lawless," the conservative Republican Senator from Texas said in the editorial.
The Republican senator also asserted that these rulings are "but symptoms of the disease of liberal judicial activism that has infected our judiciary."
"The decisions have deformed our constitutional order and have debased our culture," he said.
To cure this supposed "disease" in the high court, Cruz said he will advocate constitutional changes to make Supreme Court magistrates face retention elections every eight years.
At present, high court justices are given a lifetime tenure, but they may opt to retire.
"A remedy is needed that will restore health to the sick man in our constitutional system. Rendering the justices directly accountable to the people would provide such a remedy," he said.
Cruz is proposing that Supreme Court justices be required to secure the vote of majority of American voters and a majority of voters in at least half of the states in elections to be held every eight years.
Under the Texas senator's proposal, failure to secure these majority votes will oust a justice from the Supreme Court, and will perpetually bar him or her from serving the high court.
"When they violate the constitutional amendment and the law, the American people can remove them. We are not governed by a judicial priesthood. We are not governed by judicial tyranny," Cruz said in a separate speech in Pierson.
