At least some restraint from an overreaching Supreme Court
A Pyrrhic Victory
By NEAL K. KATYAL, NYT
Washington
THE obvious victor in the Supreme Court’s health care decision was President Obama, who risked vast amounts of political capital to pass the Affordable Care Act. A somewhat more subtle victor, but equally important, was the rule of law more generally: in an era when so many people on the left and right view the justices, and constitutional questions, through the prism of politics, the court today made clear that law matters and that it isn’t just politics by other means.
But there was a subtle loser too, and that is the federal government. By opening new avenues for the courts to rewrite the law, the federal government may have won the battle but lost the war.
Indeed, it is becoming so commonplace for the federal courts to invalidate legislation that a decision like the health care one is celebrated resoundingly — even when the court has invalidated part of a law Congress passed. In just one day, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional just as many laws of Congress as it did during the first 70 years of its existence: two.
Obviously, health care has captured the minds of Americans — but moments before the court announced that decision, which upheld the overall law but invalidated a requirement that states expand Medicaid coverage in exchange for federal financing, it struck down another law, the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a federal misdemeanor to lie about having received a military decoration.
(More here.)
By NEAL K. KATYAL, NYT
Washington
THE obvious victor in the Supreme Court’s health care decision was President Obama, who risked vast amounts of political capital to pass the Affordable Care Act. A somewhat more subtle victor, but equally important, was the rule of law more generally: in an era when so many people on the left and right view the justices, and constitutional questions, through the prism of politics, the court today made clear that law matters and that it isn’t just politics by other means.
But there was a subtle loser too, and that is the federal government. By opening new avenues for the courts to rewrite the law, the federal government may have won the battle but lost the war.
Indeed, it is becoming so commonplace for the federal courts to invalidate legislation that a decision like the health care one is celebrated resoundingly — even when the court has invalidated part of a law Congress passed. In just one day, the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional just as many laws of Congress as it did during the first 70 years of its existence: two.
Obviously, health care has captured the minds of Americans — but moments before the court announced that decision, which upheld the overall law but invalidated a requirement that states expand Medicaid coverage in exchange for federal financing, it struck down another law, the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a federal misdemeanor to lie about having received a military decoration.
(More here.)
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