Monday, April 30, 2012

In your face, Scalia. (Mandates the Founding Fathers wrote into law.)

Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution: Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge shows how the Founding Fathers supported mandates. - Slate Magazine


1st U.S. Congress image This Day in History
Some spectacular historical reporting by Professor Einer Elhauge of Harvard Law School in the New Republic thoroughly rebut the argument. He has found three mandate equivalents passed into law by the early Congresses—in which a significant number of founders served—and reports that these bills were signed into law by none other than Presidents George Washington and John Adams. As Founders go, one might consider them pretty senior in the hierarchy. Their acts can probably be relied upon to give us a reasonable idea what the Founders intended to be the scope of congressional and governmental power.
Let me be clear, I don't suddenly support "originalism" or whatever Scalia calls is judicial *cough* philosophy. There's just no getting around how funny it is that these Tea Party types, who worship a cartoon version of the Founding Fathers, wouldn't want anything to do with them if they were around today.

Sadly, it's the only the 1792 law requiring all able-bodied men to own a firearm that they'll notice when reading this article and that's the one they'll be looking to bring back.


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