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Health Care Reform and the Supreme Court: Politics Over Constitutionality
Health Care Reform and the Supreme Court: Politics Over Constitutionality
Richard Kirsch
The Obama administration's neglect did not cause this constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Republican strategy did.
On the eve of the Supreme Court's decision, after numerous lower court opinions and treacherous questioning by conservative justices, the overwhelming consensus in the legal community remains that the requirement in the Affordable Care Act to buy health insurance is unquestionably constitutional. As recently as mid-June, Bloomberg News asked law professors at the nation's top law schools whether they thought there was any question that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance was constitutional; 19 of the 21 who responded replied that it was. They were only confirming the opinions of two very conservative appeals court judges, who upheld the provision last year.
But the widespread view that the only reason we have a question before the Supreme Court is their receptivity to right-wing political manipulation of the law was not the story told by the New York Times on Sunday, under the headline, "Supporters Slow to Grasp Health Law's Legal Risks." The Times's Peter Baker faulted the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats for being unprepared for the legal challenge.
Some would view the fact that the Court is seriously debating a question that is so far out of the political mainstream, even among the most respected conservative jurists, as a testament to the groundbreaking work of a small set of conservative lawyers to change jurisprudence. They would compare their work to the careful strategy that led to decisions like the Warren Court's Brown v. Board of Education. I am not so generous. The legal arguments against the individual mandate remain flimsy and there is no comparable history of carefully plotted legal strategy. What has become more solid is the ground that the arguments are being made on, a Supreme Court majority whose magnet is not the Constitution or precedents, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In drafting what became The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Democrats in Congress and the White House had myriad complex policy and political factors to juggle. The implication that they should have added in the minuscule chance that the mandate would be successfully challenged on its constitutionality is as silly as the opponents' legal arguments.
- more -
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rediscovering-government/health-care-reform-and-supreme-court-politics-over-constitutionality
Richard Kirsch
The Obama administration's neglect did not cause this constitutional challenge to the individual mandate. Republican strategy did.
On the eve of the Supreme Court's decision, after numerous lower court opinions and treacherous questioning by conservative justices, the overwhelming consensus in the legal community remains that the requirement in the Affordable Care Act to buy health insurance is unquestionably constitutional. As recently as mid-June, Bloomberg News asked law professors at the nation's top law schools whether they thought there was any question that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate requiring the purchase of health insurance was constitutional; 19 of the 21 who responded replied that it was. They were only confirming the opinions of two very conservative appeals court judges, who upheld the provision last year.
But the widespread view that the only reason we have a question before the Supreme Court is their receptivity to right-wing political manipulation of the law was not the story told by the New York Times on Sunday, under the headline, "Supporters Slow to Grasp Health Law's Legal Risks." The Times's Peter Baker faulted the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats for being unprepared for the legal challenge.
Some would view the fact that the Court is seriously debating a question that is so far out of the political mainstream, even among the most respected conservative jurists, as a testament to the groundbreaking work of a small set of conservative lawyers to change jurisprudence. They would compare their work to the careful strategy that led to decisions like the Warren Court's Brown v. Board of Education. I am not so generous. The legal arguments against the individual mandate remain flimsy and there is no comparable history of carefully plotted legal strategy. What has become more solid is the ground that the arguments are being made on, a Supreme Court majority whose magnet is not the Constitution or precedents, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In drafting what became The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Democrats in Congress and the White House had myriad complex policy and political factors to juggle. The implication that they should have added in the minuscule chance that the mandate would be successfully challenged on its constitutionality is as silly as the opponents' legal arguments.
- more -
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rediscovering-government/health-care-reform-and-supreme-court-politics-over-constitutionality
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