Re:Slaughter House Rules - Passing the health-care bill
by hga on Tuesday March 16, 2010 @10:37AM
(#1195772)
"Kind of civics class by crisis."
And one should be cogent of the maxim that "Hard cases make bad law." That from the judicial side of things, but apropos here.
On the other hand, I think we're fortunate to have a meta-process that the public is involved in, that seems to work better than a lot of the alternatives.
As for your question and uncertainty, I've seen quite a bit of good discussion at The Volokh Conspiracy in the comments to various postings (http://volokh.com/, it's a high quality group law blog by various law professors and the like). (In fact, if you haven't visited it before, check it out, all sorts of tasty stuff right now, e.g. the 11th Circuit has just made what is possibly a bad ruling on email and 4th Amendment search and seizure. I wish I had time to follow it...).
In the discussions you'll find some comments on at least one prior ruling by the Supremes in this area; they are very reluctant but not entirely so.
And one should be cogent of the maxim that "Hard cases make bad law." That from the judicial side of things, but apropos here.
On the other hand, I think we're fortunate to have a meta-process that the public is involved in, that seems to work better than a lot of the alternatives.
As for your question and uncertainty, I've seen quite a bit of good discussion at The Volokh Conspiracy in the comments to various postings (http://volokh.com/, it's a high quality group law blog by various law professors and the like). (In fact, if you haven't visited it before, check it out, all sorts of tasty stuff right now, e.g. the 11th Circuit has just made what is possibly a bad ruling on email and 4th Amendment search and seizure. I wish I had time to follow it...).
In the discussions you'll find some comments on at least one prior ruling by the Supremes in this area; they are very reluctant but not entirely so.