Obama - Supreme Court doing its job is 'judicial activism'

As Obama waits for his landmark act of legislation to pass Supreme Court review he has publicly announced that should the court act to overturn the law, it would amount to judicial activism. Yes, that is correct: President Obama says if the Supreme Court of the United States does its job, it will amount to judicial activism.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - As any 8th grade student who has passed their first course on US government can tell you, the role of the Supreme Court is to act as the highest law in the land, carefully vetting laws and interpreting them. As it does so, it must throw out any law that violates the Constitution. 

Especially a law that contains blatantly unconstitutional provisions and was foolishly enacted without a severability clause. 

The Presidential statement is unlikely to curry any judicial favors.

During a speech on Tuesday, Obama made the following remarks:

"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."

He continued, And I'd just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law."

And said, "Well, this is a good example, and I'm pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step." 

The President should know better. He once taught a course on constitutional law at the University of Chicago. The statement appears poorly timed and aggressive and more importantly, it sounds ill informed. 

While most provisions of the Affordable Care Act are popular to many Americans, the individual mandate, which equates to the federal government mandating what individual citizens must purchase, appears to many to be an overreach of the President and the legislature. As such, and without the benefit of a severability clause, the entire law could be thrown out.

If it is, it likely won't end attempts to reform the health care system, which most Americans agree is dysfunctional and expensive. The US has the world's most expensive health care but rates lower on health and life expectancy than many modern industrialized states such as those across Europe. 

What do you think? Should Obamacare pass review? Weigh in with your comments below.

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