It seems safe to say that no Supreme Court decision has ever been extolled more effusively by its admirers than the ObamaCare one, notwithstanding the fact that it was — in the words of the admirers — based on an unpersuasive argument whose coherence is easy to question.
Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker described Chief Justice Roberts upholding ObamaCare under the “tax” argument as a “singular act of courage” — although Toobin admitted, “[f]rankly, that argument is not a persuasive one.” Jeffrey Rosen at The New Republic described the chief justice’s action as an admirable legal “twistification,” comparable to those of Chief Justice John Marshall — even though it “would be easy, of course, to question the coherence of the combination of legal arguments that Roberts embraced.” Unpersuasive, incoherent, but what an act of courage!
