Supreme Court Decision

So my thoughts on the Supreme Court today.


If Chief Justice Roberts wanted a more united court, he didn't get it. The dissent is united. The Majority opinion is bisected and trisected with concurrences and minor dissents. 


To allow the mandate as a tax undermines democracy completely. The Act barely passed because it was touted as not containing any new taxes. The Act always said there would be "penalty" for not purchasing health insurance. It would have never passed if it had said "tax." That is the only reason Congress didn't try to pass it using the tax power instead of the commerce clause. Taxes are unpopular, the Act was already unpopular passed by subterfuge. For CJ Roberts to completely rewrite the Act to include a tax is ridiculous. The mandate as a tax was also a very small argument in the briefs and the lower courts didn't consider it seriously. That four of the justices thought it was constitutional via the commerce clause makes me fear for the Republic. The full opinion is 193 pages long; as Prof. Barnett said in class two years ago, they use a lot of words when they make stuff up.


I thought CJ Roberts was a strong conservative on the side of limited government. I lost a lot of respect for him today unless of course this was all a sinister plot to bring Obama down in November which today's decision will help do. And he didn't extend the commerce power, but did extend the tax power. So it just means Congress will have to deliberate on the duck tax test when passing legislation with penalties.