A Law Can Be Both Economic Folly

If, Even As The Price To Be Paid For A Fifth Vote, I Ever Joined An Opinion For The Court That Began: 'the Constitution Promises Liberty To All Within Its Reach, A Liberty That Includes Certain Specific Rights That Allow Persons, Within A Lawful Realm, To Define And Express Their Identity,' I Would Hide My Head In A Bag. The Supreme Court Of The United States Has Descended From The Disciplined Legal Reasoning Of John Marshall And Joseph Story To The Mystical Aphorisms Of The Fortune Cookie.

Having Had The Good Fortune To Serve Beside Her On Both Courts, I Can Attest That Her Opinions Are Always Thoroughly Considered, Always Carefully Crafted And Almost Always Correct (which Is To Say We Sometimes Disagree). That Much Is Apparent For All To See. What Only Her Colleagues Know Is That Her Suggestions Improve The Opinions The Rest Of Us Write, And That She Is A Source Of Collegiality And Good Judgment In All Our Work.

[if Critics Of The Pledge Of Allegiance Persuaded The Public It Should Be Changed] Then We Could Eliminate Under God From The Pledge Of Allegiance, That Could Be Democratically Done.

Under All The Usual Rules Of Interpretation, In Short, The Government Should Lose This Case. But Normal Rules Of Interpretation Seem Always To Yield To The Overriding Principle Of The Present Court: The Affordable Care Act Must Be Saved.

You Can't Come In Smugly And With Great Self Satisfaction And Say 'oh It's Torture, And Therefore It's No Good.' Is It Really So Easy To Determine That Smacking Someone In The Face To Determine Where He Has Hidden The Bomb That Is About To Blow Up Los Angeles Is Prohibited In The Constitution? It Would Be Absurd To Say You Couldn't Do That. And Once You Acknowledge That, We're Into A Different Game.