"Congress, which would, in our minds, clearly have the power to impose insurance purchase conditions on persons who appeared at a hospital for medical services -- as rather useless as that would be -- is merely imposing the mandate in reasonable anticipation of virtually inevitable future transactions in interstate commerce."
Silberman acknowledged that...
"...the Supreme Court occasionally has treated a particular legislative device's lack of historical pedigree as evidence that the device may exceed Congress's constitutional bounds," but added that "we are obliged -- and this might well be our most important consideration -- to presume that acts of Congress are constitutional... absent ...a clear showing to the contrary."
Ultimately, Chief Justice Roberts sought to split the decision, adding new limits on the Commerce Clause but finding a way to sustain the constitutionality of the act by citing a back-up justification in the congressional power to tax.
In that way, Roberts may deserve praise for a judicious choice, backing away from another instance in which the Supreme Court injected itself into ideological and partisan battles. But he has now enshrined the Right's bogus history of the Constitution into judicial precedent.
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