For three days, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has been huffing and puffing, making it as clear as he can that he wants to scrap every page of the Affordable Care Act. By this morning, Scalia seemed to think “his position in U.S. government is also Speaker of House, President, and maybe Emperor for Life.”
His antics this week made me think of an op-ed Harvard Law scholar Laurence Tribe published a year ago, in which he looked ahead to the high court’s consideration of the Affordable Care Act. Tribe argued that proponents of the law have nothing to fear — of course a high court majority will uphold the law, because it’s such a “clear” and “open and shut” case.
Tribe practically chided folks like me for questioning whether conservative justices would be responsible in this case.
To imagine Justice Scalia would abandon that fundamental understanding of the Constitution’s necessary and proper clause because he was appointed by a Republican president is to insult both his intellect and his integrity.









