Comments on: Chief Justice Roberts and the Health of the American Body Politic http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2012/07/chief-justice-roberts-and-the-health-of-the-american-body-politic/ Informed reflection on the events of the day Wed, 15 Jul 2015 17:00:00 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.23 By: Scott http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2012/07/chief-justice-roberts-and-the-health-of-the-american-body-politic/comment-page-1/#comment-25777 Thu, 12 Jul 2012 02:37:00 +0000 http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/?p=14146#comment-25777 Being that many conservatives think of taxes as a form of punishment, equating taxes with a penalty is not so far fetched. In fact, it sounds quite reasonable compared to several of the court’s other equivocation’s: money is equal to speech, a corportation is a person, etc. Rather than harming the integrity of the court, this particular decision highlights the role of interpretation in court decisions; that is, in order to justify a decision, any form of “tortured logic” might be presented; and I would say, cynically perhaps, that politics plays more of a role here than any legal reasoning; the latter comes only after the partisan fact. Despite what any supreme court justice might say, the court has been, is, and perhaps will always be, political. Does that harm the courts integrity? I would say this, what harms its integrity is hiding behind the facade of legal objectivity, while it is clear as day that this is an exaggeration, if not an outright myth. Could it be that its interpretation the whole way down?

]]> By: Michael Corey http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2012/07/chief-justice-roberts-and-the-health-of-the-american-body-politic/comment-page-1/#comment-25767 Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:06:00 +0000 http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/?p=14146#comment-25767 Individual action matters, but so does the integrity of our institutions. I continue to be concerned about compromises to institutions to achieve worthwhile ends. Opting out of the hard work of consensus making produced a law of about 2,700 pages. I read several hundred pages of it and gave up. If instead of a 2,700 bill which few people understand even to this day, shorter bills (perhaps 36) which provided more legislative intent and fewer legislative delegations to regulators would have yielded better laws, and have avoided using budgetary techniques and manipulations to achieve major policy goals. This, in my view, degrades the institutions.

The same can be said about the Supreme Court decision. The Roberts’ opinion appears somewhat tortured to me. Basically, Justice Roberts opined that if the Senate and Congress had written the mandate as a tax then it would have been constitutional. The only problem is that the mandate was clearly written in legislative language as a penalty, not a tax. There are about 20 taxes in the bill besides the mandate penalty all of which were clearly described as taxes in the bill. The intent of the people who wrote the bill and voted on it is clear. Justice Roberts had to imagine that if writers of the bill had chosen to use their constitutional power to tax, then the law would be constitutional. None of the lower courts took this position, and the argument for it by the administration was weak to say the least. Tax bills are intended to raise money. Full compliance with this bill would actually yield no tax mandate revenues. Questions are further raised about the Supreme Court position. If the mandate was a tax and not a penalty, then the court should not have ruled on it until someone was actually taxed according to previous rulings.

So what has happened is that Justice Roberts basically rewrote a bill to achieve an outcome. It remains to be seen whether if this was the best way to address the healthcare issue. Additionally, it is unclear what economic effects the funding mechanisms will have on the economy.

Justice Roberts may have become a hero to some for an odd assortment of reasons; but it may have come at a high price to the both his own reputation and to the integrity of the court. It is worth noting that only opinions of the individual judges were issued on the limitation of the commerce clause. These positions did not become the opinion of the court. I suspect that Justice Roberts may have to deal with his relationship with other members of the court.

It still remains to be seen if quality and affordable healthcare will be available to all citizens; and the impacts on the entire healthcare system is still in doubt.

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