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Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Obamacare Arguments at the Supreme Court

I just had the chance to read the transcript of today's arguments in the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the Obamacare statute. I have been watching legal arguments and reading transcripts of them for the last 40 years; this one was facinating. First of all, I have to congratulate the attorney for the 26 states opposing Obamacare, Paul Clement, for a masterful performance. It is not often that one sees an attorney deal effectively with every one of the questions from the bench; Clement faced 9 Justices of the Supreme Court perfectly. Kudos to Mr. Clement.

Second, it was also clear that there was marked hostility towards the government's position from a majority of the justices. While one cannot tell for certain how a judge will rule based upon the questions asked at argument, one can still get a pretty good sense of where they are likely to end up. Considering today's questions from the Court, the odds seem to be that Obamacare will be held unconstitutional.

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