Tuesday, July 3, 2012

SCOTUS ObamaTax InBoxer Rebellion

(h/t Snopes for their part of the title...)

The wrangling over the meaning and long-term effects of SCOTUS's, and especially Chief Justice Roberts', ruling on ObamaCare continues.

A few items from Instapundit (bits in italics are my observations):
Meanwhile...
Tamara takes exception to Roberts' claim that "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices"
All those laws you guys have struck down as unconstitutional over the last couple centuries, whose "political choices" were you protecting us from those times? Had those other laws been imposed on us by insidious outsiders or something, so you could protect us from their consequences, but we gotta bend over and take this one because it turns out Nancy Pelosi is not actually from Betelgeuse? 
What the hell IS "judicial review" all about if not saying "Stop that! You people made foolish--even evil-- decisions"?

I suppose Chief Justice Roger B. Taney could answer that. I'm sure Dred Scott has looked him up to ask...



3 comments:

Sailorcurt said...

What the hell IS "judicial review" all about if not saying "Stop that! You people made foolish--even evil-- decisions"?

Judicial review is supposed to be about "is this law constitutional and within the power of the federal government?"

That's it.

Not "is this a good idea" or "is this evil or good".

You may disagree with Roberts in whether the law was constitutional under the auspices of a tax all day long, but I think you're off base about what the role of the supreme court is.

Granted, they've not had a good history of living up to that standard, but failing to live up to it doesn't change what the standard is.

IMHO

Drang said...

You don't call electing commies who pass unconstitutional laws with the intent of turning us all into serfs a political decision?

Sailorcurt said...

I don't understand your reply.

We're talking about judicial review and the Supreme Court's role in government.

When does the Supreme Court engage in "electing commies who pass unconstitutional laws"?

We elect the commies. The Supreme Court only decides whether the laws they pass are constitutional or not.

Again: you can argue that Roberts' decision was wrong and I'd be inclined to agree with you, but to indicate that the Supreme Court should consider the relative "evilness" or "foolishness" of a law during the review process rather than strictly determining whether the law is constitutional or not is wrongheaded in my opinion and is the very definition of judicial activism.

When we advocate for those types of subjective standards to be considered in determining whether a law be upheld or overturned, we are setting ourselves up for disaster in the event that the court has a different interpretation of "evil" and "foolish" than we do.

That's how we end up with rulings based on the "penumbras and emanations" of the constitution rather than what it actually says...and is a large part of why we are where we are right now.

Roberts was exactly right when he said that it is not the Court's role to determine whether a passed law is good government...that's the job of the voters. The role of the court is only to determine whether the law is constitutional.