Bad Judges
Time
Bomb?
Indeed, but not the way Will thinks.
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Actual problem#1
The
initial reaction by many stunned conservative to the court decision
that upheld Obamacare was— Roberts is a genius!" He was of course
nothing of the sort. Anecdotal evidence suggests that his
decision was
more a slap at Justice Scalia, because he pushed too hard for calling find the entire law
unconstitutional. Which it obviously is. So, instead of casting his lot with the four
justices who, as a rule live within the written constitution they are
sworn to uphold, Roberts went with the four, two of them appointed by
Obama, who almost never stay in
bounds.
George Will here revisits the genius tract, writing The
time bomb in Obamacare? Have at it, but here's the part
that really grabbed me.
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This
did not, however, doom the ACA because Roberts invoked what Lambert
calls “a longstanding interpretive canon that calls for the
court, if
possible, to interpret statutes in a way that preserves their
constitutionality.” Roberts did this by ruling
that what Congress
called a “penalty” for not obeying the mandate was really a tax on
noncompliance.
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I don't know where this longstanding canon came from, but the Warren
Court sounds about right. This "canon" then explains why the court
NEVER flat-out slams the door on anything.
In the end, Will leaves
his readers with another quaint notion.
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Republicans will ferociously resist
exacerbating the nation’s financial crisis in order to rescue the ACA.
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Sure they will.
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