The Meaning of "Lawless"

Senator Mike Lee thinks that the Supreme Court's decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius was a "lawless act." The argument, according to one sympathetic blog, goes like this:
"the people’s representatives may presume to pass laws in accordance with their constitutionally enumerated powers, but if the Supreme Court wishes to rubber stamp the president’s pronouncements and paint them with the color of law, the justices will simply substitute language permitting any imaginable act of despotism in open defiance of any congressional intent to the contrary."

So what is this supposed to mean? It seems to suggest that President Obama "proclaimed" the Affordable Care Act without Congressional approval, and that the Supreme Court then "rubber stamped" it without reference to the actual law. If such a thing were to happen, it certainly would not be a good thing. Of course, I'm not sure how it could occur short of a military coup, but hypothetically it would be bad.

Is that what happened? Of course not. A majority of both houses passed this law, and Obama signed it into law. A series of suits arose in court questioning the constitutionality of the law, and appellate courts differed in their conclusions on the matter. The Supreme Court then accepted the case, heard it, and ruled on it. In terms of process, nothing could be more routine or lawful.

The law regulates a type of activity -- the delivery of health care -- that spans all states and therefore might be considered, though it does not have to be, an form of interstate commerce. It requires that people acquire health insurance so that individuals, and not the collective society via the government, are responsible for paying for their own health care. 

Whether medicine is commerce, and whether the delivery of medicine to a patient constitutes interstate commerce are interesting questions, though I tend to think it's pretty clear that the answer to both is "yes." But neither conclusion is "lawless." 

That's what is so damaging about the shrill, irrational declarations of people like Mike Lee. They throw themselves from ordinary political discourse into hyper-moral opposition to the whole system -- and to discourse itself. These people think they are like the antebellum abolitionists (although I doubt Lee and other Tenth Amendment aficionados would have supported abolition), battling a fundamentally corrupt system. And what's the answer to such a problem? War.

Lee and others misapply the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that leads to actual physical conflict. Over how to reduce the cost of healthcare? Really? 

Now that is lawless.