Legal Scholar Randy Barnett: SCOTUS Rewrote the Law to Make it a Tax, Throwing it Into the Political Process

Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett, whom the Washington Post recently referred to as “perhaps the key legal thinker developing the case against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate,” issued a brief but pointed statement on the Supreme Court’s decision today which largely affirmed the Obamacare legislation.

Today’s decision validates our claim that a Congressional power to compel that all Americans engage in commerce was a constitutional bridge too far. By rewriting the law to make it a “tax,” the Court has now thrown ObamaCare into the political process where the People will decide whether this so-called “tax” will stand. And the People will also decide whether future Supreme Court nominees will pledge to enforce the Constitution’s restrictions on the power of Congress.  

Michael Patrick Leahy is a Breitbart News contributor, Editor of Broadside Books’ Voices of the Tea Party e-book series, and author of Covenant of Liberty: The Ideological Origins of the Tea Party Movement.