Are conservatives endangering the high court?
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Less than a month after President Obama signed the health-care reform into law, Justice Stephen Breyer predicted that the legislation would one day make it to the high court. Now that four federal judges have ruled on the matter, it appears that Breyer was right, and he may be weighing in, along with his colleagues, sooner than expected. What’s at stake is not just the law itself or the fate of the tens of millions who wait for its benefits, but the very legitimacy of the court.
At issue is to what extent Congress has the authority to use an individual mandate to regulate health insurance — a question that few, until recently, expected to be controversial. Jurists across the political spectrum, including Charles Fried, President Reagan’s solicitor general, have argued that the mandate is unquestionably constitutional. Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe said it would require "illusory" formulations to find otherwise.
Yet in Florida and Virginia, two federal judges appointed by George W. Bush disagree. One, Henry Hudson, ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional, and the other, Roger Vinson, voided the legislation in its entirety. Both decisions have an unmistakably political tone. Vinson’s in particular reads like a Tea Party manifesto.
I hope that the Supreme Court, when finally confronted with the issue, will hold itself to a higher standard. But right now, the signs are not very encouraging. If the court’s conservatives choose to overturn the legislation on clearly political grounds, it would call into question the legitimacy of the court. It would show, once and for all, that certain justices are governed by ideology rather than precedent. That would appear especially true when considered against the backdrop of recent events.
Clarence Thomas, for example, has recently come under fire for defying perfectly reasonable financial disclosure requirements, refusing to include key information about his wife’s employment and income on 20 years’ worth of documents. In doing so, he has shown a disregard for the law unbecoming a judge at any level. This failure is made worse by the fact that Virginia Thomas was the founder of Liberty Central, a Tea Party organization that has received corporate contributions not subject to any legal limit (only made possible by her husband’s vote in the Citizens United case) and has lobbied for the repeal of the "unconstitutional" health-care legislation.
Katrina vanden Heuvel – Are conservatives endangering the high court?