SCOTUS sides with federal power

By Greg Sargent

The Supreme Court’s landmark decision upholding the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare may be the start of a third great period in which the court has grappled with a question that continues to divide us as deeply as ever: What are the proper limits on federal power, and how far can the government go in protecting citizens from the depredations of the free market and social and technological change?

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In the broadest possible sense, this can be seen as the start of a third era in which the Court wrestles with questions surrounding the expansion of federal power — each era different from the other, says James O’Hara, a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society.

During the New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to expand the federal government’s management of the economy to cope with the Great Depression. While the court initially dealt Roosevelt plenty of setbacks, the era as a whole can be seen as a ratification of Roosevelt’s broad contention that the crisis merited expansive federal intervension.

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“We are perhaps entering a third era, in which the court is pragmatically trying to assess the place of the federal government in a world of rapid technological and economic change,” O’Hara said. “The Obama administration has approached health care with broad, sweeping legislation, and the Supreme Court is willing pragmatically to say, `Let’s give it a chance and see how it shakes down Constitutionally.’”

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