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Any explanation I submit to you won't change a thing. As "laymen" we can only speculate at best about the fragile line between interpretation and promulgation. I would have to take the time to look at the dissenting and majority opinions to get a sense of whether the line of demarcation regarding separation of powers was crossed.It is the function of Congress to promulgate federal laws and it is the function of the USSC to deem the Constitutionality of those laws. What is it about that separation of power you don't understand?Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8
They swear not to pick judges who will not follow the Constitution.
All judges follow the Constitution. it is the interpretation of it that is problematic.
Those that think the way we do are seen as following the Constitution regardless of what the body of the document reads.
Feel free to show me where Article 3 gives judges Article 1 powers reserved to congress. The Roberts court rewrote and redefined black letter law twice in ACA cases. That's just two examples. The body of the Constitution, as you put it is the supreme law of the land, they wrote it down for a reason, it's not a suggestion, it's the LAW. And every federal and State office holder swears an oath to protect and defend it.
How many times have we seen broad interpretations of the Constitution for the sake of partisan expediency . Interpretations of the Justices sometimes vary wildly from Constitutional narrative. Often the court is split. In effect that solitary fact validates my premise without question.
Why didn't you address my examples?
In the first ACA decision they found the penalty for not buying insurance unconstitutional. Then they declared it not to be an unconstitutional penalty, but a tax, in essence rewriting the law. Which they have no constitutional authority to do. At that point they should have declared the law unconstitutional and sent it back to congress to be fixed, but the didn't do that did they?
In the second example they ignored black letter text that appeared 9 different places in the law, which said no subsidies could go to States that didn't establish exchanges, and decided the intent of congress is everyone eligible for subsidies could get them regardless if the State had established an exchange. What they should have done is uphold the law as written, and left it to congress to fix it, they didn't.
So explain how those two examples are not encroaching into Article 1 powers. Thus obliterating the separation of powers.
From what I know about the majority decision, the government's case rested on three proposals for getting the ACA mandate Constitutionally legal. As a penalty, the mandate was unConstitutional under the Commerce Clause. But as a tax , the mandate was deemed Constitutional even though the actual word used in the law was" penalty."
This is the bone of contention that has sparked a torrent of controversy since the legal inception of the law. According to this link the tax approach was merely an interpretation and not an act of legislation by the Supreme Court:
An article in the Daily Beast said:How can the court call the mandate a tax if the law itself didn’t call it that?
The court is not bound to interpret laws exactly as they are written, but uses what it calls a “functional approach”—considering the substance of a law in addition to its formal language.
Under this approach, the court ruled that the penalty the law imposes on people who don’t buy health insurance “looks like a tax in many respects,” and that it is permissible under the court’s previous case law for several reasons: the amount of money due is “far less than the price of insurance” and it is collected by the IRS under normal means of taxation.
Ok, first, the congress and the president, while the ACA was being drafted and debated in congress, said time after time that the penalty was not a tax. It was never mentioned as a tax until government lawyers saw the penalty argument wasn't flying in oral arguments, so they pivoted. So this would take us back to the intent of congress the court supposedly used to ignore black letter law and authorize national subsidies in it's second opinion. How could the court ignore what congress and the president said all during the debate of the bill, and say it was all ignorance and uphold it as a tax, regardless of the stated intent of congress?
Now let's look past that question and continue to another dealing with that same opinion.
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census of Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
Would you agree that this clause prohibits direct taxation of the people by the federal government unless it's spread to the States according to population? I will assume your response will be in the affirmative since that's exactly what it says.
Having established this, the 16th Amendment provides for one exception to this clause. My B/U
Amendment XVI
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
What is the triggering event for this one exception to prohibition on direct taxation? Once again I will assume you agree it is "income". Keep in mind that the health insurance tax is levied after a taxpayers obligations are met under the 16th. So given this, how can the court invent a new and separate direct taxable event, of not having health insurance, on their own, without another amendment?