In the UK we pay National Insurance to the govt and we have a National Health Service paid for using that money, it's not socialism or capitalism, just common sense. No greedy bankers/insurance companies get their hands on the money, don't re-invent the wheel, keep it simple stupid.

Also to Obi--If the Constitution isn't adequate, there is a mechanism for amending it, as you pointed out. But to act as if it's only valid until it's inconvenient is criminal. Wasn't it Roberts who said that sobriety checkpoints probably aren't constitutional but they're so important that we're going to allow them anyway? It almost feels like the fix was in with Roberts. I feel a novel coming on... wait, that's been done.

Of course the Court can be wrong. But what they can't be is unconstitutional.

I may disagree with their rulings, and they may be overturned or changed later... but by definition, the Court's rulings are constitutional.

Obviously Mujus has a greater depth of legal knowledge than Justice Roberts.

While my preference is for a truly free market system in health care (you know, the kind that existed long ago - which had doctors routinely doing house calls for their patients for a reasonable fee so they wouldn't have to crawl out of bed and spend 4 hours in a waiting room to spend 5 minutes with a doctor for a day's wages), I think the European government-run single-payer system is slightly better than the corporate fascist system that has been validated today, where everyone is forced to become a customer of one of a handful of (government-approved) faceless corporations that doesn't need to give a shit about their customers because - 'Whoa! - where are they going to go if we deny them treatment until they die'?

It's like Mister Miyagi said - if you're on either side of the road, you're okay. But if you're in the middle of the road... splat!

Jack, that's not true. By definition, what the constitution says is constitutional. The court, if it's wrong, is therefore also unconstitutional. They're not unsupremecourtal, though.

@SC, please. You don't have to claim you have a greater depth of legal knowledge than the CJ to disagree with his opinion. That's why they write their opinions -- so everyone can read and analyze. And the decision wasn't unanimous. I guess you have a greater depth of legal knowledge than Justice Alito, since you agree with Roberts?

Santa, I didn't claim to know the law--or the constitution, in this case--better than Roberts. I merely impugned his lack of willingness to uphold the law of the land when he thinks there's a good reason not to.

The Constitution holds the Supreme Court as the final arbiter in cases like this, so by the Constitution, what they say is constitutional...is constitutional. Whether anyone else feels it should be or not.

As many bad things as we hear about the European and Canadian healthcare systems--and I had a middling-to-bad experience being treated in one European country--everyone has access to a decent level of care in those countries.

But to get a healthcare system at the expense of holding up the constitution is really dismaying.

"Obi, the latest stats show that Asians are the fastest-growing ethnicity in the U.S. at the moment."

Upon a quick search, I stand corrected.

Though I will say, as the article I saw put the figures at 37% of new immigrants being from Asia and 31% from Latin America, that at the very least the two aren't far off, and as Latin American immigrants are--as I'm sure you'll agree--the most hotly discussed new immigrants in this election and overall, and the Latin American immigration is still (to the best of my knowledge) the larger immigration between the two (it's a very recent thing that the Asian immigration rate has overtaken Latin America) that the significance of the Latino constituency is still highly significant in this election and, in any case, Romney has done nothing to particularly engender himself to Asian Americans and has arguably done quite a bit to alienate himself from Latinos.

So, I stand corrected, but even so, I think the core of my point stands.

"Also to Obi--If the Constitution isn't adequate, there is a mechanism for amending it, as you pointed out. But to act as if it's only valid until it's inconvenient is criminal. Wasn't it Roberts who said that sobriety checkpoints probably aren't constitutional but they're so important that we're going to allow them anyway? It almost feels like the fix was in with Roberts. I feel a novel coming on... wait, that's been done."

You feel the fix was in with Roberts?

Are you about to go conspiracy-theorist on us?

But in any case--

As the ruling 5-4 upheld, the Obama administration AT LEAST IN THIS INSTANCE was not treating the Constitution as only valid when it's convenient, and did not act in an unconstitutional or criminal manner.

You may disagree with the law, and even with the ruling...

But much the same way as the umpire's call, right or wrong, is *the* call in a baseball game, full stop, such is the case with this Supreme Court ruling--

You may disagree with the call all you like, but it's been called constitutional, and so it must, at least for the moment, be regarded as constitutional.

Right or wrong? That's an entirely different matter.

But criminal? No. The Supreme Court has made that call, and ObamaCare, on the legal equivalent of a bang-bang play, just barely slid under the tag and is safe and must now be recognized as constitutional.

(I WOULD note, however, at the risk of straying from my point just a tad, that two of our Rushmore presidents, Jefferson and Lincoln, had moments that are considered to have straddled that thin-thin line between fair and foul constitutionally, the Louisiana Purchase and some of Lincoln's Civil War actions...so while we should certainly stick to Rule of Law and not Rule of Whim, I would stress again that the Constitution is, at the end of the day, a set of ideals and a piece of paper--no more, no less...they're not infallible, and certainly not so set in stone that to ever straddle that line between fair and foul would be completely inconceivable or reprehensible...they're Articles and Amendments, not Commandments.)

lol, nice try, SD. You should be a lawyer with reasoning like that.

But it doesn't quite work I'm afraid. The Constitution holds them the arbiter of what will be held constitutional, because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them. So we have to treat what they say as constitutional, whether or not it is.

But you might as well argue that everything Congress passes is by definition fiscally sound and wise, just because the Constitution sets them up as the people who are supposed to decide fiscally sound and wise policy.

In fairness, Mujus, I'm not sure it's completely clear that's what CJ Roberts said about drunk driving.

I would really like to see some of the states start openly nullifying the provisions of Obamacare. States like Virginia have to an extent threatened to do so, but we'll see if some of these states actually have the willpower and votes to go ahead with such measures.

I don't think that just because the Court says something is "constitutional" that everyone has to accept that it is constitutional, certainly not state legislatures. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court, those all-powerful nine men and women in black robes, is definitely suspect given past rulings such as Roe v. Wade and Dred Scott.

"SC, please. You don't have to claim you have a greater depth of legal knowledge than the CJ to disagree with his opinion. That's why they write their opinions -- so everyone can read and analyze. And the decision wasn't unanimous. I guess you have a greater depth of legal knowledge than Justice Alito, since you agree with Roberts? "

No, I don't have an opinion. I might have an opinion on policy, but when it comes to law I don't pretend to be able to truly argue against a guy who spent his entire life broadening and deepening his knowledge in law. This is especially true when a man shrugs off those who put him in office and probably everyone who ever gave him a political break because his knowledge of the law leads him in one direction.

You can disagree with policy, I think it takes balls to disagree with reading of law, whatever the decision, and this includes me with Alito, yes.

"But it doesn't quite work I'm afraid. The Constitution holds them the arbiter of what will be held constitutional, because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them. So we have to treat what they say as constitutional, whether or not it is."

Actually the constitution doesn't hold the Supreme court arbiter of what is constitutional. Judicial review arose out of the Marshall court.

"I would really like to see some of the states start openly nullifying the provisions of Obamacare. States like Virginia have to an extent threatened to do so, but we'll see if some of these states actually have the willpower and votes to go ahead with such measures. "

Nullification, yes great solution. Too bad precedent hadn't been kind to it. The great part about this is that this time the Federal government wouldn't even have to send troops in to enforce the rule of law, it would just have to threaten taking away funding and federal jobs from the state stupid enough to dust off that concept from the scrap heap of history.

Glad the guy that thinks the concept of judicial review is in the constitution lectured me about his ability to critique a legal genius's opinion.

I'm not sure who you're talking to, but certainly judicial review is implicit in the Constitution.

so Judicial review wasn't established by Marbury v. Madison? Amend the history books!

Marbury versus Madison HOLDS that judicial review is in the Constitution. And it has been upheld by every court since. So, since you don't believe in reconsidering what great legal minds have said, I assume that should settle it.

So it seems what you are saying is "The Constitution holds the Supreme Court as the final arbiter in cases like this, so by the Constitution, what they say is constitutional...is constitutional." Unfortunately I seem to remember you were taking issue with that very statement.

No, SC, you're wrong. What I'm saying is YOU hold that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter, and deserves sufficient respect that you would not substitute your own opinion for its own; so while I could go to the trouble of explaining to you why judicial review is in the Constitution (which would amount to summarizing Marbury's excellent reasoning, which itself summarized the Federalist number 78), I can save myself a lot of trouble, in your case, by just pointing out to you that the Court which you so revere has _consistently_ held to be true the very proposition upon which you were recently heaping scorn. And that should convince YOU.

I'm waiting...

For?

an explanation of where judicial review is in the constitution, I am genuinely interested. The Federalist , debates in congress, ratifying conventions, or Marshall's legal reasoning do not change the fact that judicial review is nowhere in the constitution.

I legitimately want to know where "The Constitution holds them the arbiter of what will be held constitutional, because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them."

Are you waiting for the quotation from Marbury? Here it is:

"Thus, the particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written Constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void, and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument."

Notice how he says it's based on the phrasing in the Constitution?

As I've already said, you should have a look at Federalist 78, too (which predated Marbury by fifteen years and says the same thing).

Ah, I see. Well, first, I'll note that I said it was "implicit" in the Constitution.

Next -- I'll answer your question if you tell me, in light of the quote I just gave from Marbury, how your questioning its being in the Constitution is consistent with the great deference you give to great legal minds such as Marshall.

I fully agree that judicial review is implicit in the constitution. I understand though that in order to uncover aspects that are implicit in the constitution it requires interpretation. My questioning intended to show the ridiculous nature of somebody who originally claimed "The Constitution holds them the arbiter of what will be held constitutional, because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them." When the constitution does no such thing without Marshall's opinion. It is stated nowhere explicitly in the constitution and Marshall's ruling was essential in establishing judicial review. He INTERPRETED the phraseology and the implicit nature of the judicial review, because you know well that there is nothing granting judicial review written in ink.

AT THE VERY SAME TIME that you claim judicial review was lying dormant between the lines in the constitution (and its revelation by Marshall granted the concept a retroactive place in the constitution), you treat the current Supreme Court decisions as mere opinions adhered to "because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them. So we have to treat what they say as constitutional, whether or not it is."

So on one hand you have Marshall's opinion which is retroactively is written into the constitution and then you have this supreme court decision which might as well be written on a post it.

So if you truly from the beginning believed that you were speaking of the constitution implicitly granting the judicial branch the power to declare laws unconstitutional (which I don't think you were, you said implicit after I broached the topic), I see a lot of inconsistency which I probed with my questioning.

The supreme court gets it wrong, and the supreme court makes decisions for political reasons (even in landmark cases such as Marbury v Madison in the context of the Federalist decline), but I hold that unless you have a deep knowledge in law, your objections are without merit and based largely on your view of policy. I think a discussion where it just so happens everyone's legal opinions line up perfectly with their opinions of policy proves that fact.

OK, SC, several points to address here.

I'm glad you agree that judicial review is implicit in the text of the Constitution. Presumably, you would also agree that it was implicit there even before Marshall wrote Marbury (since the text didn't change in 1803). What it means to say that Marbury was a good opinion, then, is just that it brought out something that really was there in the text. I have no compunction at all judging a decision like that. I've been trained in life how to reason, and I feel capable of evaluating legal arguments. There is nothing mystical about them.

Certainly Marshall interpreted the text -- of course, others had done so before him. Both sides of the ratification debates, for example, already largely agreed on this feature of the Constitution.

Now, you say,

"AT THE VERY SAME TIME that you claim judicial review was lying dormant between the lines in the constitution (and its revelation by Marshall granted the concept a retroactive place in the constitution), you treat the current Supreme Court decisions as mere opinions adhered to 'because somebody has to decide for practical purposes, and so it's them. So we have to treat what they say as constitutional, whether or not it is.'

"So on one hand you have Marshall's opinion which is retroactively is written into the constitution and then you have this supreme court decision which might as well be written on a post it."

You're badly misinterpreting my words, sorry. I'm simply stating one simple fact, and I'm really surprised it's causing any controversy: sometimes the Supreme Court gets something wrong. (Certainly the Supreme Court believes this). When it does, its ruling has authority, but not accuracy. These are distinct concepts. How that can be difficult to grasp, I have no idea.

Let's take a simple example. Suppose that Marshall had ruled that federal courts did NOT have the power to invalidate unconstitutional laws. Then his opinion would have been controlling, because it is the Supreme Court and it has that authority; but it would have been wrong and unconstitutional.

I think that you think you're catching me in a contradiction because I accept some SCOTUS opinions and not others. Well, guess what? I accept the ones that I think were correctly reasoned (like Marbury) and reject the ones I don't (like Lochner). Of course, I still abide by the latter, if the Court hasn't yet overturned them.

To summarize once more: as we both agree, judicial review IS implicit in the text of the Constitution, and this was recognized already pre-ratification. I accept judicial review because it is in the Constitution, not because Marshall said it existed. I just happen to agree with Marshall, and applaud him for a very important decision, whose importance was to implement and stake out in reality the legal power that was already there on paper.

I applaud much less other opinions that stake out legal power that is NOT on paper.

"So if you truly from the beginning believed that you were speaking of the constitution implicitly granting the judicial branch the power to declare laws unconstitutional (which I don't think you were, you said implicit after I broached the topic), I see a lot of inconsistency which I probed with my questioning."

I always meant implicit. What else would I mean? It's not explicit in the text, but it's very clearly there implicitly in the text.

"but I hold that unless you have a deep knowledge in law,"

Well, I reject this. I wouldn't say that I have a "deep knowledge," certainly. I have some, though. I attended a pretty decent law school for three years in order to study Constitutional law, and did so; I've studied many of the Court's opinions, different perspectives on them, and a deal of its history. I've coauthored an amicus brief for a Supreme Court case. None of this, in my opinion, adds up to a "deep understanding" of the law. But you have to start somewhere, right? Somewhere between being a hack and having a deep understanding, you'd better start reasoning for yourself about the Court's opinions, and for reasons other than policy. How else would you ever get to where you could actually reason deeply?

In any case, I completely reject your elitism. As I already said, there is nothing mystical about legal reasoning. There are a lot of principles to keep in mind when reading or thinking about law, but none of them is impossible for an intelligent adult to understand. The Supreme Court writes its opinions for a reason, and it's not just for other lawyers: they are partially for citizens so that they can read and understand and evaluate. I have personally heard a Supreme Court justice say that, too, but then, perhaps you would know better why it is he writes things.