OPENING ARGUMENTS BEGIN MARCH 26 - The Supreme Court will not overturn health care reform. At least if the five-justice conservative majority that brought the country Citizens United and Bush v. Gore can be stymied by the possibility of being the first court in over 75 years to strike down a sitting president's signature domestic achievement.
Congress' party-line passage of the Affordable Care Act two years ago triggered unceasing speculation over the prospect of a similarly partisan end-game at the Supreme Court. And given the litany of sharply divided conservative victories in the court's most politically charged cases, casual court watchers would not be unreasonable to expect the five Republican appointees to strike down the Affordable Care Act's individual health insurance mandate and perhaps the entire law with it.
Reasonable expectations, however, can be wrong. The battle this time is likely to be an intra-conservative conflict between the economic libertarianism underlying the mandate's challenge and the traditional principles of judicial restraint that have defined right-wing jurisprudence for more than a half-century.
The Affordable Care Act constitutional saga opens its final chapter on March 26, when the court takes to the bench for six hours of oral arguments [link] over three days. The justices will finally offer scraps of their thinking, through questions and comments to the lawyers before them, to a public hungry for hints of whether Congress exceeded its commerce clause power by requiring virtually all Americans to purchase minimum health care coverage or pay a tax penalty. (The rest of Mike Sacks’ analysis here)
(This article was posted first at huffingtonpost.com) -cw
Tags: health care, Supreme Court, Affordable Care Act
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 23
Pub: Mar 20, 2012
