Home / General / The Commerce Clause and the Slippery Slope

The Commerce Clause and the Slippery Slope

/
/
/
1291 Views

I have an article up at the Prospect on the hot new trend in arguments that policies that Republicans supported until Obama started supporting them represent a massive threat to liberty and the Constitution: if the Supreme Court upholds the mandate, the broccoli tyrants will be knocking down your door.    The argument, of course, makes no sense on several levels, not least because you can make similar arguments about any possible government power:

But the most important problem with this argument is that it proves too much. If the federal government cannot be permitted any power it might potentially abuse, there would be nothing left. Utterly uncontroversial powers that are explicitly stated in the Constitution give the federal government the authority to pursue policies that would be far more foolish and destructive than even the dreaded broccoli mandate. Congress could, for example, declare war on Canada, or the president could use nuclear weapons to pulverize the entire European Union. The idiocy and gross immorality of such policies doesn’t mean that Congress’s power to declare war or the president’s status of commander-in-chief of the military should be written out of the Constitution.

And the same goes for the power that Congress has to regulate interstate commerce. Ultimately, the best check against unwise legislation is politics.

Arguments that the ACA is unconstitutional have to stand and fall on their own merits, not based on laws Congress could but won’t pass if the law is upheld. And the merits of these arguments are very weak.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :