You would have to be living under a rock not to know last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a really big deal.
Never mind this is a campaign year and the act was the signature achievement for the incumbent president; assuming it survives intact long enough to become ingrained on the American public, the largest single expansion of social welfare since the 1960s will impact every American man, woman, and child for generations to come.
A good example of just how big a deal this is was underscored by the fact that people connected to the court are talking about the behind the scenes action.
Usually Supreme Court deliberations are cloaked in secrecy. However, this time around, sources leaked a little inside information.
According to July 1 CBS News story, (www.cbsnews.com) sources say Chief Justice John Roberts originally sided with the conservative side of the court feeling the mandate requiring every private American citizen obtain health insurance from a private company was an overreach by Congress; one that strained the oft-strained Commerce Clause beyond the breaking point.
However, according to CBS News, during the six weeks between oral arguments and the last week’s ruling, Roberts paid attention to pundit’s analysis and news reports outlining the potential long term damage to the court’s credibility if the justices struck down the ACA along the court’s familiar 5-4 ideological split.
In our opinion, he was smart enough to take those concerns into account.
In this case, we agree it would be hard for the court to recover from the fallout of an obvious partisan decision on an extremely political issue, especially not on the heels of such recent, politically-charged decisions as Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 and Bush v. Gore in 2000.
If the CBS story is accurate, despite intense lobbying by Justice Anthony Kennedy, Roberts took the long-term view of the court, and sent the issue where it belongs, back to politicians, and by extension, back to the voters.
Despite the public beating Roberts is currently taking, we feel he acted correctly for the court in the long haul.
If we are truly to be a nation of laws and not of men, as John Adams once opined, the courts need to stand above the fray; the Supreme Court more so than all others.
Forget the political hyperbole. If the integrity of the courts is an open question, we are a nation in trouble. In other words, if the end result of pursuing justice through the courts comes down to the personal feelings of the jurist, why take your chances relying on the law?
Given the specific merits of the case, we don’t like the decision anymore than we like the law.
We don’t agree, and we will never agree, the government has the authority to require a private citizen to engage in commerce, in this case legally obligating a citizen to purchase a given product from a private industry. It was a bad idea when Republicans first floated it in the ’90s and it’s a bad idea now.
Such a mandate is ripe for abuse and over regulation, as we have already seen from three years of soaring insurance rates.
That however is an argument for another time. Right now, we commend Justice Roberts for taking the long-term view.
