More Good Stuff Against Roberts' Decision
By Quin Hillyer on 7.6.12 @ 11:57AM
http://spectator.org/blog/2012/07/06/more-good-stuff-against-robert
From our friend Mark Fitzgibbons.
- Folks, the constitutional rule of law lost. To use a more appropriate metaphor, the only thing that looks silver is the shining metal of knives the government wields.
- The unprecedented takeover of one-sixth of our economy and the greatest loss of individual liberty that the largest number of Americans have suffered in over a century is just the tip of the iceberg. Whatever rhetorical spin one can put on Roberts' opinion is more than offset by the practical, deep, transcending, and even hidden effects of the ObamaCare ruling.
Fitzgibbons also makes a crucial point that has received too little attention:
- The principal duty of any court is to adjudicate the matter before it. Opponents of ObamaCare lost the case. Period.
All this talk about Roberts cleverly setting the court or the national political debate up for the next round is completely wrongheaded. That is not a judge's, or a justice's, job. The job is to decide correctly the case immediately before them. That's why it's called "case law." The reigning interpretation of the Constitution and laws is developed by slow accretions of court decisions, not by the courts playing politics to protect their own "majesty" while supposedly painting political actors into a corner. Each case decision ought to stand on its own, with its own logic enjoying ample foundation. This decision manifestly doesn't. Fitzgibbons is right to point that out.
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