Law in the Raw by Linda Greenhouse
Nearly a week has gone by since the Supreme Courts unexpected decision to enlist in the latest effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act, and the shock remains unabated. This is Bush v. Gore all over again, one friend said as we struggled to absorb the news last Friday afternoon. No, I replied. Its worse.
What I meant was this: In the inconclusive aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, a growing sense of urgency, even crisis, gave rise to a plausible argument that someone had better do something soon to find out who would be the next president. True, a federal statute on the books defined the someone as Congress, but the Bush forces got to the Supreme Court first with a case that fell within the courts jurisdiction. The 5-to-4 decision to stop the Florida recount had the effect of calling the election for the governor of Texas, George W. Bush. I disagreed with the decision and considered the contorted way the majority deployed the Constitutions equal-protection guarantee to be ludicrous. But in the years since, Ive often felt like the last progressive willing to defend the court for getting involved when it did.
Thats not the case here. There was no urgency. There was no crisis of governance, not even a potential one. There is, rather, a politically manufactured argument over how to interpret several sections of the Affordable Care Act that admittedly fit awkwardly together in defining how the tax credits are supposed to work for people who buy their health insurance on the exchanges set up under the law.
Further, the case the court agreed to decide, King v. Burwell, doesnt fit the normal criterion for Supreme Court review. . .
So no, this isnt Bush v. Gore. This is a naked power grab by conservative justices who two years ago just missed killing the Affordable Care Act in its cradle, before it fully took effect. When the court agreed to hear the first case, there actually was a conflict in the circuits on the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate. So the Supreme Courts grant of review was not only unexceptional but necessary: a neutral act. The popular belief then that the courts intervention indicated hostility to the law was, at the least, premature.
Not so this time. There is simply no way to describe what the court did last Friday as a neutral act. . .
So this case is rich in almost every possible dimension. Its arrival on the Supreme Courts docket is also profoundly depressing. In decades of court-watching, I have struggled sometimes it has seemed against all odds to maintain the belief that the Supreme Court really is a court and not just a collection of politicians in robes. This past week, Ive found myself struggling against the impulse to say two words: I surrender.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/law-in-the-raw.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
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CTyankee
(63,912 posts)This is very, very bad. Paul Krugman also is worried...and when he's worried, I'm worried...
elleng
(130,972 posts)Glad you saw it, I guess. We can suffer our worries together.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)elleng
(130,972 posts)I'm glad you saw it, rider.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)It deserves it.
But I can kick it!