Obama’s Health-Care Law Has Legal Support, Retired Justice Stevens Says

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Retired Justice John Paul Stevens said a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving medical marijuana provides legal support for President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

Stevens, now 91 and more than a year into retirement, said in an interview in Washington this week that he is skeptical about contentions that Congress lacked authority to pass the health-care measure, which requires Americans to either buy insurance or pay a penalty.

Stevens wrote the court’s opinion in the 2005 case, a 6-3 ruling that let the federal government ban marijuana even when the drug doesn’t cross state lines and is used only for medicinal purposes. As with health care, that case centered on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

“To the extent that the commerce clause is an issue in the case, it just seems to me very similar” to the medical marijuana dispute, said Stevens, who served on the court for 34 years.

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The 2005 marijuana ruling will be a pivotal precedent when the justices consider the health-care law.

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The majority included Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, both of whom had voted to restrict Congress’s commerce- clause power in earlier cases. Scalia didn’t adopt Stevens’s reasoning, instead providing his own analysis in a concurring opinion.

Stevens suggested Scalia might be willing to uphold the health-care law even if he disagrees with its substance.

“I would expect that the merits wouldn’t have the slightest impact on his analysis of the constitutional issue,” Stevens said. “I’m sure he’ll approach it as a judge should approach it.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-28/health-care-law-has-precedent-retired-justice-stevens-says.html

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Stevens was about as out there as you can get on the left. I wouldn't expect him to say any less.

Edited September 28, 2011 by Crusty Old Perv