Marcus v. Obama v. SCOTUS
President Obama must have really overstepped yesterday when he warned the Supreme Court justices against ruling Obamacare unconstitutional. How do I know? WaPo columnist Ruth Marcus is criticizing him for his remarks.
What caused her to take this enormous step, despite the fact that she favors Obamacare and the individual mandate, thinks both are clearly constitutional, and believes that “it would look like a political act to have the five Republican-appointed justices voting to strike down the law and the four Democratic appointees voting to uphold it”? This is what sparked the stirring of unease in her, and caused the headline writer to characterize Obama’s words as “unsettling”:
And yet, Obama’s assault on “an unelected group of people” stopped me cold. Because, as the former constitutional law professor certainly understands, it is the essence of our governmental system to vest in the court the ultimate power to decide the meaning of the constitution. Even if, as the president said, it means overturning “a duly constituted and passed law.”…
…[T]he president went too far in asserting that it “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step” for the court to overturn “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” That’s what courts have done since Marbury v. Madison. The size of the congressional majority is of no constitutional significance. We give the ultimate authority to decide constitutional questions to “a group of unelected people” precisely to insulate them from public opinion.
Marcus’s words “stopped me cold” stopped me cold. Something about this incident has grabbed her attention in a big way.
Dare I hope that this is the beginning of a “change” experience for her? Probably not; almost certainly not (especially since she spends the last paragraph of her column railing against conservatives who denounce judicial activism). But note that she refuses to hew to the near-universal party line that the conservative justices are just political tools concerned with stupid and/or trifling and/or irrelevant and/or crazy questions:
I would lament a ruling striking down the individual mandate, but I would not denounce it as conservative justices run amok. Listening to the arguments and reading the transcript, the justices struck me as a group wrestling with a legitimate, even difficult, constitutional question. For the president to imply that the only explanation for a constitutional conclusion contrary to his own would be out-of-control conservative justices does the court a disservice.
I don’t know whether Marcus is alone among Obamacare supporters in denouncing the president’s remarks in such relatively strong language. I haven’t seen anyone else among her peers doing the same, but I can’t say I’ve been doing extensive reading on the left to find them. Anyone out there who’s discovered a similar article from an Obamacare supporter condemning his remarks?
[NOTE: And if anyone’s planning to start the old “Obama wasn’t a law professor, he was a law lecturer” routine, I refer them to this, which is the official U. of Chicago statement on the matter. Obama was certainly not a tenure-track professor, but the university itself considered him entitled to the title “professor.”]
This *should* be a crack in her facade, but for that to stick, she has to have an interest in the truth, not just a twinge of professional pride. I’m not convinced… but it’s good to see the crack, at least.
Tesh: I agree that it’s a crack, and that cracks are good. I also think the crack would not have occurred in the first place had she not had some interest in truth.
Some people are uncrackable.
neo, re your concluding NOTE. I just finished teaching a semester as an adjunct. I, too, was a professor by title, but I know the difference between a courtesy and substance. BHO’s all lipstick and no pork.
LAG: agreed. Obama calls himself by the title and that may indeed be stretching it, but at least according to the U. of Chicago he’s entitled to do it.
“For the president to imply that the only explanation for a constitutional conclusion contrary to his own would be out-of-control conservative justices does the court a disservice.”
This is Obama’s modus operandi. Those who have been paying attention have seen this all before (“I won,” don’tcha know?). Still, it’s good to see Ms. Marcus recognize and address this from the “other side of the aisle.”
LAG is right. “Professor” in these circumstances is/was a courtesy title, much like “Kentucky colonel.” Departments confer it on guest lecturers instead of paying them (or paying them appropriately) because for some it’s a resume builder, and for the others an ego stroke (that in many such cases they desperately, and somewhat sadly, crave). Its use also forestalls awkward questions and lengthy answers about where exactly in the hierarchy a stranger fits.
But if he’s not tenure track (and most especially if he’s never published anything) he’s not a professor, Univ. of Chicago’s statement notwithstanding. (They say they invited him to join the faculty in a full-time tenure-track position, i.e., to join as a junior faculty member trying to get tenure, or in other words to actually become a professor in fact, rather than merely in title.)
Also, what was Chicago going to say at this juncture?
“No, of course he wasn’t a professor, we just had some local pols and well-heeled prospective donors lean on us to throw him bone as a resume builder, so to placate them and the EEOC we let him teach an elective course entitled “Race Baiting and You” until we could offload the bozo without political repercussions.”
OB,
Your second post is probably close to the truth, as I’m sure you know (that pesky Occam’s razor thing).
What amazes me is having the provenance of a position in Chicago and a Harvard JD, how breathtakingly little he seems to know or care about the material he studied and supposedly taught. It’d be like a surgeon asking the scrub nurse for “that thing we cut with.” Not what I want to hear as I go under the knife.
It’d be like a surgeon asking the scrub nurse for “that thing we cut with.”
And then, when the scrub nurse asks if the scalpel is sterile, he hesitates, then wipes the blade on his jeans before making the first incision.
Look, it’s Chicago. “Barry’s” election to the Senate so inspired Michelle’s performance that the hospital trebled her pay. I guess she’d been pacing herself up to that time. Then, when they went to the White House, the hospital no longer needed someone in her position. Now that’s what I call doing a great job – done not only now, but in perpetuity too.
OB,
That was vicious, but correct. After all, it IS Chicago (“Nice little Court you have there . . . . H/T Vanderleun)
Neo: I think Jon Meacham had an article up cautioning Obama about admonishing SCOTUS in public over this.
Re: Marcus. She is just an intelligent liberal who occasionally exhibits that she is capable of independent thought when confronted with an egregious situation.
It seemed to me that at times Kennedy, Alito, Roberts, and Scalia each asked questions that tried to elicit arguments that might persuade them that the act was constitutional. We shall see if any of them were persuaded, but I thought that they were persuadable. I did not hear Breyer, Kagan, Sotomayor, or Ginsberg ask any questions that led me to think they were persuadable.
I see Marcus as someone who is persuadable, willing to listen seriously, even if she is not persuaded regarding this particular question.
And if anyone’s planning to start the old “Obama wasn’t a law professor, he was a law lecturer” routine
———————–
Nah, my retort to that is that’s great, that means Herbert Hoover is a freaking engineering professor and he wrote “the” book in his field. (As well as spoke Chinese and translated Latin for fun. Top that one.)
If I recall correctly, the faculty of Chicago Law did not look so kindly on the alleged Professorship.
I am with LAG. Hereafter, please call me Professor as I also was a member of the Adjunct Faculty; in my case at “Box Top U.” Oh, that could describe any number of Institutions of Higher Learning these days.
The point is moot. He neither understands nor respects the Constitution. Referring to him as a Constitutional Professor at the University of Chicago is a dark stain on a school that has enjoyed a notable reputation; and makes one wonder how much it is deserved. They clearly cheated their students in this one documented instance.
I tried to read Marcus from time to time when I subscribed to the Washington Post. I did not find anything there except knee jerk Dimocrat talking points. This column is a mixed bag, but it is a lot more honest than anything else I have seen under her name.
I’m certain that the university considered Obama the equal in stature and quality of its other professors. I will defer to the U in this matter on who has and who has not the intellectual and moral capacity to be a professor at U of C. I know I hold them all in equal respect.