One might ask how can we call the Justices of the Supreme Court Tea Partiers. The fact is, the majority Republicans (5) in the Court support and attend meetings and affairs thrown by the Koch Brothers and their ilk. Those are the people that initiated the Tea Party and paid others to organize the alleged “grass roots” coalition.
The Week
The court’s conservative wing appears ready to engage in some despicable judicial activism on ObamaCare. Politically, at least, the justices are doing Obama a favor – Robert Shrum
Recall the scorn toward health reform dripping from the lips of Injustice Antonin Scalia. Or think of the tight-lipped Clarence Thomas, who could send a mannequin to sit in his place at the court’s oral arguments for all the difference his brooding presence makes. Along with the more plausibly judicious Samuel Alito, he too had more than likely made his decision. And so on the nation’s highest court, satire replaced stare decisis in a slightly altered version of the Red Queen’s jurisprudence inAlice in Wonderland: First the verdict, then the trial.
Some observers, and administration officials, hold out hope that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Anthony Kennedy will decide to save health reform from the revanchist claims of right-wing constitutionalism. I’m pessimistic because I lived through Bush v. Gore, when the court acted like a political ward committee, stopping the vote count in Florida to hand the presidency to George W. Bush by the margin of a single judicial vote.
Now comes the historic decision on health reform — which could reach far beyond the case to fray the whole fabric of progress in modern America. To overturn the individual mandate, to throw out all or most of the rest of the law, would be an act of naked judicial activism, which conservatives profess to despise. In truth, though, they practice it vigorously, in barely concealed disguise, when it advances their own ends. Depending on the “reasoning” rationalized by five horsemen of the judicial right, they could jeopardize other basic protections — for example, the prohibition against segregation at distinctly local enterprises like lunch counters, a prohibition that depends on a generous and long-prevailing view of federal regulation of interstate commerce.
Related articles
- Why Obamacare Will Survive Court Politics (businessweek.com)
- Sign of Changing Conservatism: Reagan Administration Lawyers Concerned About Supreme Court Activism (themoderatevoice.com)
- Choose Your Opponents Carefully (themoderatevoice.com)
- Did the Supreme Court Tip Their Hand on Healthcare Ruling? (usnews.com)
- Reagan Solicitor General “Appalled” That Supreme Court Repeats Tea Party Arguments (alan.com)
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