Thursday, November 17, 2011

Heads I win, Tails they Lose: The Supreme Court and Obamacare

The individual mandate and Obamacare is up for consideration by the Supreme Court.  In essence, the Supreme Court is to decide whether the Commerce Clause actually means anything (hint, if it always applies, it is meaningless).  I find the situation rather encouraging.  Here's why:

A slight majority of the population wants to see it struck down by the Supreme Court.  If that happens, it will cost the Court quite a bit of institutional prestige.  I suspect this is what will happen, probably on a 5-4 vote.
If the Court on the other hand decides NOT to strike it down, it'll cost tremendous amounts of prestige as well---again, it'll probably be a 5-4 vote--at least as much as Roe v Wade.  Since I'm all about the delegitimization of the Judicial System, this is a no-lose situation, unless the court can pull something truly Solomonic out of its hat.  I'd prefer they strike it down---considering I have zero confidence that a Republican administration would, even if it had both houses of Congress and the executive.

1 comment:

TJIC said...

I'm leaning towards assuming the Supremes are going to shoot this down (just because this is their last chance to say that the Commerce Clause has ANY limitations, and while they'll treat the Constitution like a cheap whore, they won't actually sign a credit card receipt that says "blow jobs"), so I've been optimistic on that front.

...but you raise an excellent point that no matter how this goes half the population is going to think that the court is politically motivated.

Win/win indeed!