David Rivkin and Harvard Law Prof to Face Off June 15

Washington D.C. – As the U.S. awaits the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), the various factions pro and con continue to line up and weigh in on both whether and how the controversial law will stand. David Rivkin, who led the 26-state case against the U.S. government in Florida’s 11th District Court (whose judge, Roger Vinson, ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, will meet Harvard Law professor Einer Elhauge, author of amicus briefs that assert the legality of the individual mandate. The debate is scheduled for 9:00 am, on Friday, June 15, at the Texas Bar Association’s Annual Conference in Houston.

For more information on the debate and the conference, visit www.texasbar.com.

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Constitutional Attorney David Rivkin to debate Harvard Law Professor at Texas Bar Association Meeting

The final word on the Obama administration’s signature health care law has yet to be spoken.  As the Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) looms, organizations throughout the nation are lining up speakers and events to present their opinions—whether a pre-decision debate that might sway an undecided justice, or a post-mortem discussion on how the justices got it right or wrong.  Regardless of when the Supreme Court decision is handed down, the June 15 Texas Bar Association debate on the topic, the interchange promises to be both lively and substantive.

David Rivkin, an appellate attorney whom the Wall Street Journal credits with initiating the question of ObamaCare’s constitutionality and who represented the 26 states in the Florida health care lawsuit, will debate Harvard Law professor Einer Elhauge, who has filed amicus briefs asserting the legality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate.  The debate is scheduled for 9:00 am, on Friday, June 15, at the Texas Bar Association’s Annual Conference in Houston.

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If the Supreme Court upholds purchase mandates in health care, they will become a mainstay of federal regulation throughout the U.S. economy.

By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. And LEE A. CASEY

Since the Supreme Court’s historic three-day ObamaCare hearings in late March, the president and his supporters have tried to pressure the Justices into upholding that law, asserting that any other decision would overstep the court’s constitutional bounds. Ruling against ObamaCare would not be what the president called illegitimate “judicial activism,” but an appropriate exercise of the Supreme Court’s core constitutional role.

“Judicial activism” is one of those agreeably ambiguous terms that can support almost any criticism of the courts. Under our constitutional system, judicial activism entails judges rewriting rather than interpreting the laws, exercising “will instead of judgment,” in Alexander Hamilton’s phrase.

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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.

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