The Supremes and Health Care: Second "Switch in Time" (tags)
In April 1937 Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts switched sides, stopped voting that minimum-wage laws and the New Deal programs were unconstitutional and got on board with the Roosevelt administration's program to save the court from progressive political attacks. Likewise, current Chief Justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act largely to preserve the court's reputation and neutralize Democrats' attempts to make the court's Republican majority and partisan 5-4 decisions like Citizens United an issue in the 2012 campaign.
Health Care and the Supremes (tags)
When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act in late March, the vicious hostility of their comments signaled their intent not only to rule so-called "Obamacare" unconstitutional but to fundamentally recast the Court's jurisprudence. It's clear from the health-care hearings and from previous decisions like Citizens United that the Court's five-member Right-wing majority wants to return to the days before and during the New Deal when the Court quite consciously saw its mission as protecting the 1 percent by ruling any meaningful attempt at regulating the economy unconstitutional.
Constitutionally Protected Symbolic Speech (tags)
class war