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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(Published in The Washington Post, April 27, 2012)

The United States has just lost a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda terrorists: the residents of Virginia, and state employees in particular.

Virginia’s legislature recently passed a bill that forbids state employees, including police and members of the National Guard, from participating in the investigation, surveillance, detention or arrest of any suspected member of al-Qaeda or its affiliates, if that suspect is a U.S. citizen.

The bill, which Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) signed Wednesday, is unconstitutional. It trenches on the federal government’s war powers and violates conditions under which Virginia and other states have received billions of dollars of federal funding. It has dangerous symbolic and practical consequences and undermines the cooperation necessary to disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda plots on our shores.

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(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.

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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.

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