(Part I of II) David Rivkin goes live on the second hour on Bill Bennett’s ‘Morning In America’ and reviews the Supreme Court and their roles during last three days of the ObamaCare hearings and what to expect next.
Post your comments and thoughts on the SCOTUS ObamaCare hearings and what you think is going to happen next. Follow David Rivkin on Twitter, @DavidRivkin, for the latest news.
(Part II of II) David Rivkin goes live on Hour 2 of Bill Bennett’s ‘Morning In America’ and reviews the Supreme Court and their roles during last three days of the ObamaCare hearings and what to expect next.
Post your comments and thoughts on the SCOTUS ObamaCare hearings and what you think is going to happen next. Follow David Rivkin on Twitter, @DavidRivkin, for the latest news.
The Affordable Care Act claims federal power is unlimited. Now the High Court must decide.
(Published in The Wall Street Journal, March 22, 2012)
Few legal cases in the modern era are as consequential, or as defining, as the challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that the Supreme Court hears beginning Monday. The powers that the Obama Administration is claiming change the structure of the American government as it has existed for 225 years. Thus has the health-care law provoked an unprecedented and unnecessary constitutional showdown that endangers individual liberty.
It is a remarkable moment. The High Court has scheduled the longest oral arguments in nearly a half-century: five and a half hours, spread over three days. Yet Democrats, the liberal legal establishment and the press corps spent most of 2010 and 2011 deriding the government of limited and enumerated powers of Article I as a quaint artifact of the 18th century. Now even President Obama and his staff seem to grasp their constitutional gamble.
Day one of SCOTUS hearings on the constitutionality of President Obama’s health care law, does the government have the right to require you as an American to buy health insurance?
The High Court is slated to make a decision in late June. In an interview with Jon Scott, Constitutional Attorney David Rivkin explains what to expect and what the Justices are expected to say.
Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce is broad but not limitless.
(published in The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2012)
By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. AND LEE A. CASEY
On Monday, the Supreme Court will begin an extraordinary three-day hearing on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. At stake are the Constitution’s structural guarantees of individual liberty, which limit governmental power and ensure political accountability by dividing that power between federal and state authorities. Upholding ObamaCare would destroy this dual-sovereignty system, the most distinctive feature of American constitutionalism.
ObamaCare mandates that every American, with a few narrow exceptions, have a congressionally defined minimum level of health-insurance coverage. Noncompliance brings a substantial monetary penalty. The ultimate purpose of this “individual mandate” is to force young and healthy middle-class workers to subsidize those who need more coverage.
(Published in The Washington Post, March 12, 2012)
While we hold the military’s honor sacred, the government cannot penalize speech, whether true or false, simply because it might harm this honor.
Any law that seeks to protect the government’s reputation runs afoul of the most basic bargain of sovereignty, reflected in our Constitution. James Madison said, “The censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people.” In this context, it is doubtful that the government can ever be libeled by a citizen, any more than a citizen can libel himself. We don’t let the government sue for libel — only individual officials. And even if the government could be libeled, the First Amendment forbids laws banning speech that challenges or impugns the government’s reputation.