legaltheoryblog - supreme court obamacare decision represents gestalt shift in thinking
http://lsolum.typepad.com/legaltheory/2012/06/the-decision-to-uphold-the-mandate-as-a-gestalt-shift-in-constitutional-law.html
The Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate today on a 5-4 vote. The decisive opinion by Justice Roberts reasons that the mandate was not authorized by commerce clause, but instead upheld the mandate as a tax. Justice Roberts wrote:
Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.
Individuals are not required to purchase insurance; instead they have the option to pay a tax instead. On the medicaid, issue Justice Roberts's opinion indicates that the Congress cannot encourage (or coerce) states to participate in the expansion of medicaid by conditioning their receipt of existing medicaid funds on their participation.
Had the Court struck down the mandate, it would have clearly represented a tectonic shift in American constitutional law. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that there had been a majority opinion authored by one of the four justices fromt he left wing of the Court, the decision would have cemented (at least for a time) the most common academic understanding of Congress's power under Article One of the Constitution. Roughly, that understanding is that Congress has plenary legislative power, limited only by the carve outs created by the Supreme Court's decisions in Lopez and Morrison.
On the alternative gestalt, the power of the federal government is limited to the enumerated powers in Section Eight of Article One, plus the New Deal additions. These are huge, but not plenary and unlimited.
Today, it became clear that four of the Supreme Court's nine justices reject the academic consensus. As Justice Kennedy states in his dissent joined by Scalia, Thomas, and Alito:
"In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
The alternative gestalt is no longer an outlier, a theory endorsed by a few eccentric professors and one odd justice of the Supreme Court. And because Justice Roberts believes that the mandate is not a valid exercise of the commerce clause (but is valid if interpreted as a tax), he has left open the possibility that there is a fifth justice who endorses the alternative gestalt.
We are only minutes into a long process of digesting the Health Care Decision. But in my opinion, one thing is clear. Things are now "up for grabs" in a way that no one anticipated when the saga of the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act began.
The Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate today on a 5-4 vote. The decisive opinion by Justice Roberts reasons that the mandate was not authorized by commerce clause, but instead upheld the mandate as a tax. Justice Roberts wrote:
Our precedent demonstrates that Congress had the power to impose the exaction in Section 5000A under the taxing power, and that Section 5000A need not be read to do more than impose a tax. This is sufficient to sustain it.
Individuals are not required to purchase insurance; instead they have the option to pay a tax instead. On the medicaid, issue Justice Roberts's opinion indicates that the Congress cannot encourage (or coerce) states to participate in the expansion of medicaid by conditioning their receipt of existing medicaid funds on their participation.
Had the Court struck down the mandate, it would have clearly represented a tectonic shift in American constitutional law. In the extraordinarily unlikely event that there had been a majority opinion authored by one of the four justices fromt he left wing of the Court, the decision would have cemented (at least for a time) the most common academic understanding of Congress's power under Article One of the Constitution. Roughly, that understanding is that Congress has plenary legislative power, limited only by the carve outs created by the Supreme Court's decisions in Lopez and Morrison.
On the alternative gestalt, the power of the federal government is limited to the enumerated powers in Section Eight of Article One, plus the New Deal additions. These are huge, but not plenary and unlimited.
Today, it became clear that four of the Supreme Court's nine justices reject the academic consensus. As Justice Kennedy states in his dissent joined by Scalia, Thomas, and Alito:
"In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety."
The alternative gestalt is no longer an outlier, a theory endorsed by a few eccentric professors and one odd justice of the Supreme Court. And because Justice Roberts believes that the mandate is not a valid exercise of the commerce clause (but is valid if interpreted as a tax), he has left open the possibility that there is a fifth justice who endorses the alternative gestalt.
We are only minutes into a long process of digesting the Health Care Decision. But in my opinion, one thing is clear. Things are now "up for grabs" in a way that no one anticipated when the saga of the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act began.
posted by tnj at 10:30 AM
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