“Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
Well, if overturning an act of Congress were unprecedented, it would certainly be extraordinary, but it isn’t, so it wouldn’t be. The Supreme Court has not been that shy about overturning acts of Congress, last doing so in 2000, in United States v. Morrison. Furthermore, the constitutionality of a law is not affected by the number of votes it received during passage. As for a “democratically elected Congress,” when did we last have one that wasn’t?
As a graduate of Harvard Law School, and a “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago Law School who taught courses on constitutional law, the President knows more about constitutional law than most lawyers. He could have said something along the lines of “the Affordable Care Act represents a sensible, constitutional, necessary step in addressing our nation’s health care crisis, and I’m sure the Court will uphold it.” So why does he does he talk like an ignoramus instead?
