President Obama recently made a sloppy statement about judicial power. In response, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sent a disturbing message about judicial decorum.
The president started the dust-up on April 2 in remarks about the Supreme Court’s pending decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. He expressed “confiden[ce] that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” He clarified his comments the following afternoon, explaining that “the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws” but that “precisely because of that extraordinary power…the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature,” particularly on “an economic issue, like health care.”
