The Husband sends us to read George Will:
On Monday the Supreme Court begins three days of oral arguments concerning possible -- actually, probable and various -- constitutional infirmities in Obamacare. The justices have received many amicus briefs, one of which merits special attention because of the elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central to the debate as it should be.
Hitherto, most attention has been given to whether Congress, under its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, may coerce individuals into engaging in commerce by buying health insurance. Now the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, has focused on this fact: The individual mandate is incompatible with centuries of contract law. This is so because a compulsory contract is an oxymoron.
The brief ... says Obamacare is the first time Congress has used its power to regulate commerce to produce a law "from which there is no escape."
And "coercing commercial transactions" -- compelling individuals to sign contracts with insurance companies -- "is antithetical to the foundational principle of mutual assent that permeated the common law of contracts at the time of the founding and continues to do so today."
Read it all at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamacares-rewriting-of-contract-law/2012/03/23/gIQAVuFmWS_story.html
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