Obamacare Revisited

Last week the Supreme Court wrapped up their review of the Obamacare trial. The verdict won't be out until some time this summer, but that won't keep voices from being heard. Mr. Obama finally decided to come out and play too. 


President Obama, who was a former Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago, said the following on Monday:


"I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." 


I'm no law professor for a top 10 law school. But, I do have a little over 3 months of Con Law under my belt, and even I know that were the court to overturn Obama's health care bill, it would not be "unprecedented" territory. In fact, I could have told you after day one of con law class that this is not uncharted territory. Why? Because the most well known supreme court case in its history was covered on my first day of class. The case: Marbury v. Madison, of course...


"In Marbury in 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall laid down the doctrine of judicial review. In the 209 years since, the Supreme Court has invalidated part or all of countless laws on grounds that they violated the Constitution. All of those laws were passed by a "democratically elected" legislature of some kind, either Congress or in one of the states. And no doubt many of them were passed by "strong" majorities." http://online.wsj.com/article


Now, this is not to say that judicial activism is not alive and kicking. It most certainly is. I will leave that argument for another blog post. Needless to say, a supreme court decision ruling Obamacare unconstitutional would be a far cry from unprecedented territory. Based on precedent, it would be about as rare as a Portland Trail Blazers loss. 

Greg Oden, Portland Trail Blazers

(Yes, I'm a bitter Blazers fan. Yes, I was all about Greg Oden when we drafted him, and I probably would have been all about Sam Bowie when the Blazers drafted him over his airness, Michael Jordan, in the 1984 draft.)


Presiden Obama expressed his confidence that the justices would restrain from "activism":

"I'm pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step."


"That Step," is a step the supreme court has taken many times before, and will likely take many times again.