The Supreme Court, writes Andrew C. McCarthy in NRO, is a reflection of the political class, of which it is very much a part. As the president rules unilaterally, the courts are there to give the administration the aura of legal rigor. King v. Burwell was not a constitutional case. Rather it was a simple, direct matter of statutory interpretation.
What made it ostensibly straightforward was the law: a statute that says, “an Exchange established by the State,” cannot possibly mean “an Exchange not established by the State.” If we were a nation of laws, such a case would never make it to the highest court in the land.
As McCarthy points out, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor did not author one opinion in the plethora of opinions on same-sex marriage, on refashioning Congress’s Fair Housing Act, and, of, of course on Obamacare. And there was zero speculation on how the four Progressive justices would vote. “There was no need. They are the Left’s voting bloc.”
“Once it has become a given that a critical mass of the Supreme Court is no longer expected, much less obliged, to do law, then the Court is no longer a legal institution. It is a political institution,” writes Andrew McCarthy. Read more here.
