On June 28, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its eagerly
anticipated decision in National Federation of Independent
Business v. Sebelius, the case arising from the legal
challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a.
ObamaCare. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts
rejected the Obama administration’s claim that Congress may force
Americans to buy health insurance under its power to “regulate
commerce…among the several states” but found the mandate lawful
under a different constitutional provision, Congress’ power to “lay
and collect taxes.” “The Government asks us to interpret the
mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the
Constitution,” Roberts declared. “Granting the Act the full measure
of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read.”
Most opponents of the health care law promptly described the ruling as an unmitigated disaster, but not the libertarian legal scholar most closely associated with the case: Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett. An attorney for the National Federation of Independent Business and one of the architects of the ObamaCare legal challenge, Barnett maintains there is a silver lining to Roberts’ ruling. The chief justice “substituted a less dangerous tax power for a far more dangerous Commerce Clause power,” Barnett said during an interview in reason’s Washington, D.C., office in early July. Had the Supreme Court accepted the government’s unprecedented theory of the Commerce Clause, Barnett explains, Congress would have had the power “to do anything it wants with respect to the economy.” The upshot, he argues, is “we won in our effort to preserve the Constitution and in fact, we moved the ball in a positive direction.”
Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University Law Center and the author of nine books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton), sat down with Senior Editor Damon Root to discuss the ObamaCare ruling, the “echo chamber” of liberal academia, and whether the Constitution is consistent with libertarian principles.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/18/we-won-in-our-effort-to-preserve-the-con
Most opponents of the health care law promptly described the ruling as an unmitigated disaster, but not the libertarian legal scholar most closely associated with the case: Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett. An attorney for the National Federation of Independent Business and one of the architects of the ObamaCare legal challenge, Barnett maintains there is a silver lining to Roberts’ ruling. The chief justice “substituted a less dangerous tax power for a far more dangerous Commerce Clause power,” Barnett said during an interview in reason’s Washington, D.C., office in early July. Had the Supreme Court accepted the government’s unprecedented theory of the Commerce Clause, Barnett explains, Congress would have had the power “to do anything it wants with respect to the economy.” The upshot, he argues, is “we won in our effort to preserve the Constitution and in fact, we moved the ball in a positive direction.”
Barnett, a professor of legal theory at Georgetown University Law Center and the author of nine books, including Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton), sat down with Senior Editor Damon Root to discuss the ObamaCare ruling, the “echo chamber” of liberal academia, and whether the Constitution is consistent with libertarian principles.
Read more: http://reason.com/archives/2012/09/18/we-won-in-our-effort-to-preserve-the-con
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