PrintApril 5, 2012
The Positivist President?
President Obama has just launched an attack upon the Supreme Court justices critical of the constitutionality of a 2,400-page health care bill passed exclusively by Democrats. Few if any of these Democrats actually read the bill in its entirety before voting for it. The president nevertheless wonders at how the Supreme Court justices, an "unelected" group of people," might muster the temerity to take such an "unprecedented and extraordinary step" as to "overturn a duly constituted rule of law ... passed by a majority of members in the House and Senate." I note in passing that the president ordered Holder's Justice Department to cease its defense of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law passed by a bipartisan Congress.
The president's legal theory forms no part of constitutional jurisprudence. He claims no less than that the Supreme Court has no right or power to review the constitutionality of congressional legislation. The president's theory is nowhere...(Read Full Article)
