Thomas More Law Center v. Barack H. Obama
Gird your loins, liberals. As compelling an argument as Judge Sutton makes, even for individual insurance mandate skeptics like yours truly, it's a policy argument first and foremost and further, the federal District Courts and the Circuit Courts of Appeal are far more inclined to defer to Congress's interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause — a deference weighted, in my humble opinion, by a selective reading of the Supreme Court's prior Commerce Clause pronouncements — than will be the Chief Justice and his colleagues. And loins need be trebly girded because these "Obamacare" cases are clearly headed for their ultimate disposition at the end of June, 2012, the conclusion of the high Court's term, when it traditionally hands down its most contentious decisions.
Smack in the middle of a presidential campaign.
That the Supreme Court has docketed the aforementioned appeal is no indication it will accept it, of course, but I reckon its acceptance — most likely consolidated with one or two others making their way upward — is guaranteed. There is simply no way the SCOTUS is going to let stand the decision of a lower court, whatever its outcome, on the most important constitutional question to come along in decades, if not in centuries.
August 5, 2011
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9 comments:
Pres Obama and the Democrat Senate appear to have a very important decision to make.
Seems to me Obama's position is pretty much non-retractable at this point, along with those of his backers, like Laurence Tribe, who advocate for the permissive view of the Commerce Clause. But I think the permissive buck is going to stop with this one.
I think that people generally want national healthcare but they want it simplified and privatized through 3rd party administrators that can help control costs (Unions, AARP, Costco, Sams, who knows who could be authorized) possibly in exchange for increasing everyones incomes (2-2.5%)that would help increase tax revenues as well, is how I understand it.
Hope I'm not wrong because the plan impresses me that it could turn everything around for the good. Thought you knew.
I don't even know who you are.
Marbury v. Madison, Dred Scot, the decisions validating Social Security and the NLRA -- all nothing compared to this.
Well your mileage may vary of course but it's pretty significant, whether the Commerce Clause empowers Congress to compel the purchase of private corporations' products.
It should have read 2 - 2.5 x's
Sorry for snapping, IT, my beef is with the US Supreme Court, not you. Bush V. Gore showed they are partisan hacks who will go to any length to implement their policies, Constitution be damned. And can anyone doubt that Roberts and Alito would have signed on in 2000?
I wonder if Justice Marshall realized how dangerous judicial supremacy can be - and that is what it is when lifetime appointees accountable to no one overrule the President and national legislature with no sense of restraint.
Roger B. Taney would have liked to invalidate Lincoln's raising troops to defend the Union in 1861 and no doubt would have had Abe not made it clear he would pay no attention. The Supreme Court in the 1930s was invalidating the New Deal wholesale and many observers thought the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act were next. Only FDR's threat to "pack the Court", an entirely constitutional measure, backed them down.
We are at such a moment today.
No problem. I think the blame at this point lies with Congress and more recently with Obama's attorneys for letting the question narrow to specifically whether the Commerce Clause allows for the insurance mandate. It seems they lost the argument long ago as to whether the mandate is a form of tax, although the Supreme Court may revive it. And you raise some very interesting points.
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