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| Precedential election |
| 2012-06-27 |
| Thursday will be a big day, in the American Republic, if the Supreme Court indeed pronounces upon ObamaCare. Its decision is likely to include surprises, pleasant and unpleasant to all parties, and the arguments will themselves be unexpected to many. This is because the court currently has, among its nine members, perhaps six who are genuinely learned in the law, and therefore capable of thinking outside received media and academic categories. It makes more sense to comment before the decision, than immediately afterwards, when pundits will fixate upon the immediate political implications. This is understandable in a presidential election year, when the fallout from the ruling will be substantial. The election result could depend on how the respective parties spin it -- so that, for instance, apparent defeat in court could be turned into victory in November, or a close finish turned into a rout. But to my mind, the benchmark the justices will inscribe may have a larger consequence, as precedent, farther down the road. For the question about the "individual mandate" -- whether the U.S. federal government has the power, under the "commerce clause," to compel the citizen to purchase something he does not want, and may consider to be morally abhorrent -- goes to the heart of Roosevelt's New Deal, and the American Nanny State that was erected upon it. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #4 I'm not sure who the third one would be either. Hm! I don't think Kagan is a lefty shill. She's more of a useful idiot than a hardcore ideologue, and she's way too intimidated by the power of her position to do anything crazy with it. She sounds dumb about the Constitution because she's used to be a litigator, whose job is not to be *know* but to *argue.* To take every position, however asinine, futile, or contradictory, leaving it to the wisdom of the impartial judge to decide who's slightly less whacked in the head. She's used to being "down here," not "up there." |
| Posted by: RandomJD 2012-06-27 21:28 |
| #3 Kagan's a lefty shill. I heard some excerpts from her irt the on going Obamacare debate - I can't believe she has a law degree and is on SCOTUS. She clearly does not understand the Constitution or that you cannot simply make it say what you want it to in order to meet current political or economic exigencies. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2012-06-27 20:57 |
| #2 ...the court currently has, among its nine members, perhaps six who are genuinely learned in the law, and therefore capable of thinking outside received media and academic categories. I wonder who these members are in the author's mind? Most likely Kagan and Sotomayor. Who's the third? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2012-06-27 10:19 |
| #1 ....goes to the heart of Roosevelt's New Deal, and the American Nanny State that was erected upon it. Amen and amen! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-06-27 08:47 |