Litigation

Tribe on Health Care Sparks Blogosphere Debate

By Peter Hardin

Constitutional law scholar Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School (photo) predicts in a New York Times op-ed that the Supreme Court will easily uphold the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s health care reform:

“There is every reason to believe that a strong, nonpartisan majority of justices will do their constitutional duty, set aside how they might have voted had they been members of Congress and treat this constitutional challenge for what it is ? a political objection in legal garb.”

Not all others were convinced by Prof. Tribe, and the debate raged on. “[C]ontra Tribe?s claims, there are no Supreme Court precedents standing for the proposition that the federal government has authority for ‘the economic choices of individuals,’? Jonathan Adler writes in the Volokh Conspiracy.

In Slate, Tom Scocca frets, “The whole essay is a quixotic effort not to be quixotic?to presume, for the sake of argument, that the Supreme Court still has an image and a purpose to protect, rather than a legislative agenda to advance.”

In the Wall Street Journal, James Taranto says about op-eds by both Tribe and Akhil Reed Amar of Yale (see Gavel Grab), “Both professors simply refuse to take seriously the legal arguments on the other side, even after those arguments have been accepted by two federal trial judges.”

The discussion followed federal Judge Roger Vinson’s recent ruling that a central provision of the health care law was unconstitutional, and that the entire law was therefore invalid (for background, check out Gavel Grab).

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 09, 2011 (boomark / email).