Laurence Tribe on the Constitutionality of Obamacare

[MJ]

February 8, 2011
Laurence Tribe on the Constitutionality of Obamacare
Posted by Stephan Kinsella on February 8, 2011 09:27 AM

In a NYTimes column, On Health Care, Justice Will Prevail, “liberal” law professor Laurence Tribe weighs in on how Obamacare will fare at the Supreme Court. I fear he is correct in his assessment that probably only Justice Clarence Thomas will have the constitutional cojones to vote that Obamacare is unconstitutional. As Tribe writes:

It would be asking a lot to expect conservative jurists to smuggle into the commerce clause an unenumerated federal “right” to opt out of the social contract. If Justice Clarence Thomas can be counted a nearly sure vote against the health care law, the only reason is that he alone has publicly and repeatedly stressed his principled disagreement with the whole line of post-1937 cases that interpret Congress’s commerce power broadly.

And yet some of the comments Tribe makes are just sickening in their giddy endorsement of collectivism and statist evil. To-wit:

“Individuals who don’t purchase insurance they can afford have made a choice to take a free ride on the health care system.

“Those judges made the confused assertion that what is at stake here is a matter of personal liberty ­ the right not to purchase what one wishes not to purchase ­ rather than the reach of national legislative power in a world where no man is an island.”

How disgusting and fascist. Criticizing independence as being a “free rider.” Using trite bromides like “no man is an island” as a pathetic pretense at a justification for totalitarian state control over individual lives.

Tribe says,

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.

As I said, it think Tribe is right that most Justices, probably 8 of the 9, will endorse the broad federal/Congressional powers necessary to uphold Obamacare. But it is not because they are doing their “constitutional duty” or “justice”. It is because they are part of the state that is supposed to limit the state itself. Because they twist the Constitution to legitimize the central state’s actions. In other words, because they are evil.

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