At Heart of Health Law Clash, a 1942 Case of a Farmer’s Wheat
By ADAM LIPTAK
NYT
WASHINGTON — If the Obama administration persuades the Supreme Court to uphold its health care overhaul law, it will be in large part thanks to a 70-year-old precedent involving an Ohio farmer named Roscoe C. Filburn.
Mr. Filburn sued to overturn a 1938 federal law that told him how much wheat he could grow on his family farm and made him pay a penalty for every extra bushel.
The 1942 decision against him, Wickard v. Filburn, is the basis for the Supreme Court’s modern understanding of the scope of federal power. It is the contested ground on which the health care case has been fought in the lower courts and in the parties’ briefs. And it is likely to be crucial to the votes of Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, who are widely seen as open to persuasion by either side.
“Wickard has become so foundational for generations of lawyers that any plausible understanding of the commerce power must come to terms with it,” said Bradley W. Joondeph, a law professor at Santa Clara University.
(More here.)
NYT
WASHINGTON — If the Obama administration persuades the Supreme Court to uphold its health care overhaul law, it will be in large part thanks to a 70-year-old precedent involving an Ohio farmer named Roscoe C. Filburn.
Mr. Filburn sued to overturn a 1938 federal law that told him how much wheat he could grow on his family farm and made him pay a penalty for every extra bushel.
The 1942 decision against him, Wickard v. Filburn, is the basis for the Supreme Court’s modern understanding of the scope of federal power. It is the contested ground on which the health care case has been fought in the lower courts and in the parties’ briefs. And it is likely to be crucial to the votes of Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Antonin Scalia, who are widely seen as open to persuasion by either side.
“Wickard has become so foundational for generations of lawyers that any plausible understanding of the commerce power must come to terms with it,” said Bradley W. Joondeph, a law professor at Santa Clara University.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
There are really two issues that are ignored in this article. One is that Congress in passing its legislation was unclear as to what "commerce" it was regulating. Was it regulating the insurance industry? Or was it regulating the healthcare industry? There is no case law that I am aware of that gives Congress the power to "regulate" one industry when it claims to be regulating another industry. Secondly, when Congress regulates an industry the term "regulate" only, and has always, applied to putting requirements on the providers (aka sellers) of goods and services. Consumers are not part of an industry. And since they are not part of an industry until they enter into a commercial transaction, they are exempt from Congressional authority under the Commerce Clause. The Insurance Manadate in Obamacare tries to force merely POTENTIAL consumers to become consumers, and as such is clearly unconstitutional.
One final note, the article failed to mention that the Wickard case was decided under duress. The President threatened the court with a court-packing scheme if the Court did not bent to the President's desires. Wickard should never have become law if the Constitution has bee honored.
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