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Biden Does NOT need a BILL to close the border
He only needs a PEN. Thats all he needed to open it.
Thats all he needed to close it. Thats all Trump needed.
Maybe this is just Proof Trump is better than Biden.

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 |  All Boards  |  Guest Posting Area  |  Topic: "Obamacare": Justice Will Prevail 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Kravitz
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« on: 02 09, 11, 12:44:09:AM » Reply

February 7, 2011
On Health Care, Justice Will Prevail
by LAURENCE H. TRIBE
Cambridge, Mass.
New York Times


THE lawsuits challenging the individual mandate in the
health care law, including one in which a federal
district judge last week called the law
unconstitutional, will ultimately be resolved by the
Supreme Court, and pundits are already making bets on
how the justices will vote.


But the predictions of a partisan 5-4 split rest on a
misunderstanding of the court and the Constitution. The
constitutionality of the health care law is not one of
those novel, one-off issues, like the outcome of the
2000 presidential election, that have at times created
the impression of Supreme Court justices as political
actors rather than legal analysts.


Since the New Deal, the court has consistently held
that Congress has broad constitutional power to
regulate interstate commerce. This includes authority
over not just goods moving across state lines, but also
the economic choices of individuals within states that
have significant effects on interstate markets. By that
standard, this law’s constitutionality is open and
shut.


Does anyone doubt that the multitrillion-dollar
health insurance industry is an interstate market that
Congress has the power to regulate?



Many new provisions in the law, like the ban on
discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, are
also undeniably permissible. But they would be
undermined if healthy or risk-prone individuals could
opt out of insurance, which could lead to unacceptably
high premiums for those remaining in the pool. For the
system to work, all individuals — healthy and sick,
risk-prone and risk-averse — must participate to the
extent of their economic ability.


In this regard, the health care law is little different
from Social Security. The court unanimously recognized
in 1982 that it would be “difficult, if not impossible”
to maintain the financial soundness of a Social
Security system from which people could opt out. The
same analysis holds here: by restricting certain
economic choices of individuals, we ensure the vitality
of a regulatory regime clearly within Congress’s power
to establish.



The justices aren’t likely to be misled by the
reasoning that prompted two of the four federal courts
that have ruled on this legislation to invalidate it on
the theory that Congress is entitled to regulate only
economic “activity,” not “inactivity,” like the
decision not to purchase insurance.


This distinction is illusory. Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they
can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on
the health care system.


They know that if they need
emergency-room care that they can’t pay for, the public
will pick up the tab.



This conscious choice carries
serious economic consequences for the national health
care market, which makes it a proper subject for
federal regulation.



Even if the interstate commerce clause did not suffice
to uphold mandatory insurance, the even broader power
of Congress to impose taxes would surely do so. After
all, the individual mandate is enforced through
taxation, even if supporters have been reluctant to
point that out.
Kravitz
Guest
« Reply #1 on: 02 09, 11, 12:46:37:AM » Reply

Given the clear case for the law’s constitutionality,
it’s distressing that many assume its fate will be
decided by a partisan, closely divided Supreme Court.



Justice Antonin Scalia, whom some count as a certain
vote against the law, upheld in 2005 Congress’s power
to punish those growing marijuana for their own medical
use; a ban on homegrown marijuana, he reasoned, might
be deemed “necessary and proper” to effectively enforce
broader federal regulation of nationwide drug markets.
To imagine Justice Scalia would abandon that
fundamental understanding of the Constitution’s
necessary and proper clause because he was appointed by
a Republican president is to insult both his intellect
and his integrity.




Justice Anthony Kennedy, whom many unfairly caricature
as the “swing vote,” deserves better as well. Yes, his
opinion in the 5-4 decision invalidating the federal
ban on possession of guns near schools is frequently
cited by opponents of the health care law. But that
decision in 1995 drew a bright line between commercial
choices, all of which Congress has presumptive power to
regulate, and conduct like gun possession that is not
in itself “commercial” or “economic,” however likely it
might be to set off a cascade of economic effects. The
decision about how to pay for health care is a
quintessentially commercial choice in itself, not
merely a decision that might have economic
consequences.



Only a crude prediction that justices will vote based
on politics rather than principle would lead anybody to
imagine that Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice
Samuel Alito would agree with the judges in Florida and
Virginia who have ruled against the health care law.




Those judges made the confused assertion that what is
at stake here is a matter of personal liberty — the
right not to purchase what one wishes not to purchase —
rather than the reach of national legislative power in
a world where no man is an island.




It would be asking a lot to expect conservative jurists
to smuggle into the commerce clause an unenumerated
federal “right” to opt out of the social contract.




If Justice Clarence Thomas can be counted a nearly sure
vote against the health care law, the only reason is
that he alone has publicly and repeatedly stressed his
principled disagreement with the whole line of post-
1937 cases that interpret Congress’s commerce power
broadly.




There is every reason to believe that a strong,
nonpartisan majority of justices will do their
constitutional duty, set aside how they might have
voted had they been members of Congress and treat this
constitutional challenge for what it is — a political
objection in legal garb.
----
Laurence H. Tribe, a professor at Harvard Law School,
is the author of “The Invisible Constitution.”
--
nytimes.com/2011/02/08/opinion/08tribe.html
Jim
When someone claims to have an Open Mind they are soon shocked, dismayed, and offended that there actually are other views.
Contributor
Sr. Member

Posts: 62177

What would they do without Anecdotals or Snark


« Reply #2 on: 02 09, 11, 03:46:15:AM » Reply

 
Justice Will Prevail?   When the Left uses the phrase "Justice Will Prevail" what they really mean is "Our Way Will Prevail."
 
I don't want Justice to Prevail. I want the Constitution to Prevail. The Constitution is a tangible set of rules. "Justice" is whatever the person using the word wants it to mean.  That's not good enough, and people should understand that.
 
 
 
 
Kravitz
Guest
« Reply #3 on: 02 09, 11, 10:42:39:AM » Reply

You want the Constitution to prevail - Good!
 
That will be the outcome when SCOTUS turns back the campaign by the corporate elite to undermine it and stage their ongoing attempted coup de etat - by upholding "Obamacare" and the Constitution.
 
 
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