The main reason for the “inartful drafting” is the death of Ted Kennedy and the election of Scott Brown in his place. That unfortunate series of events threw the process into chaos and required the “complicated budgetary procedure” that requires only 51 votes rather than the 60 votes needed for non-budget Senate bills, which would have been filibustered to death with Brown in Kennedy’s place.
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Inartful drafting…(.artful dodge on JR’s part).
The slippery slope that the HouseTrashingJuvieTeaLinquents provided…
TeaFreakin’Hee!
Well put, O1.
The inartful drafting of those four words was critical to getting health care reform passed into law. The four words also received six votes on the Supreme Court.
Somebody in Congress or on the congressional staff wrote those words, and
they should be recognized for their skill and art.
I’m extremely impressed that you got that out in one long, tortured sentence. But I fear that a few inartfully drafted words in one of the clauses may cast the meaning of the whole post into doubt.
Which Roberts knew very well, he’s just being disingenuous…and no doubt felt he needed to take at least a few shots since he was forced into the unenviable position of having to side with major “liberal” legislation (from that bastion of liberal thought, the Heritage Foundation)…again.
I’ve placed it elsewhere, but here it is again.
Although I never saw it argued by the government, one of the first “rules” of statutory construction (STOP RIGHT THERE…in law this meaning of the word “construction” is how statute were assembled or put together by using using extraneous arguments when the legislature was creating the law and how the various provision of the law fit together WITH THE EMPHASIS ON FINDING A MEANING THAT UPHOLDS THE LAW). The good Justice Scalia ought to go practice what he constantly preaches…namely using "traditional law to reach a legal conclusion (I’m trying to remember how the book in Law School wrote it. C’mon guys…I’ve been out of Law School for almost 40 years). This decision spells out as plainly as it possibly can that Scalia, Thomas and Alito abuse their positions by using the Court, not as a means of proper meaning of the law, but simply for purely partisan gains.
What do you expect from legislators (mostly lawyers), whose job is to write laws as ambiguously as possible? (Keeps them employed after they leave office - the ones who can’t make it as lobbyists.)
“The Affordable Care Act contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting,” Roberts wrote in his majority opinion…
Fair enough. The drafting was sloppy, and Congress deserves criticism for that. But the drafting is sloppy because the whole process was sloppy, and it would not have been so sloppy except that the Republicans dug in their heels and refused to participate in the normal legislative process, which is to hammer out disagreements and come to a compromise. When one side absolutely refuses to compromise, determined to have its way despite that way being a minority position, then this is what you get: mostly gridlock, and inartful drafting for what legislation manages to make it through.
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Yeah, I wondered what he was talking about, too. The Senate version got the 60 votes. That’s why the House ultimately had to hold its nose and go with the Senate version after Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat that had been held by Ted Kennedy. There was no longer any chance of going to conference committee and getting a revised version through the Senate.
Oh, OK – I guess he’s referring to this:
You might also read into it some of the despondency that comes from having to recognize that your ideology is largely a failure.
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Hey, if they didn’t have the foresight to remove four words that added nothing substantive to the law, but instead left a clear opening for this sort of attack, the drafters were careless, not just inartful.
Ascribing the mistake to the legislative process used to pass the bill was sticking the CJ’s nose where it doesn’t belong, but pointing out that the potential for a baleful result in the bill as written could have been eliminated by care in drafting its language is well within the purview of the Court.
Edit: Anal nitpicking is what lawyers do. Sometimes it’s useless, or worse. Sometimes it’s vital.
What I’m hearing is something else. He doesn’t hate the decision at all, but he hates having the Court dragged into making it just because of incompetent work by the folks on the Hill.
He hates that because it gets him into a pissing contest with his political allies on the Court and out there. He doesn’t like it when his legal side and his political side are at odds. It puts him out of his comfort zone, and exposes to himself the less-than-sterling elements of his character—the stuff we see every time we look at him.
You stop right there. You have the purpose and methods of code construction rules (or acts) down to a T, but the meaning of construction in this context is the act of construing.
A code construction act (that’s what we call it formally in Texas, your state’s law may differ) or protocol guides the court’s construction of the act by determination of legislative intent through examination of the legislative history (committee hearings and so forth).
You know all this, I’m sure, but I’m afraid you may have confused the punters. [To any who might be wondering about that last word: see: OED, punters, definition 1.1]
BTW, I will have been out of law school 38 years come August. Time flies—except when it crawls.
What I like is that he used Scalia’s common sense reasoning against him in deciding this case, and how can you cannot love, “applesauce” and “jiggery pokery.” What does that even mean?
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That he’s old enough to remember W.C. Fields and minstrel shows?
Applesauce in the sense of nonsense is in the OED as chiefly North American. I picture in my mind Fields saying it, but that could be creative memory. I know it was used st least through the 30’s, like horse feathers, as a polite form of bullshit.
Jiggery-pokery is chiefly British, and dates at least to the late 19th century. [Source: OED] I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it in older English movies, possibly costume dramas. Means deceitful or dishonest behaviour [sic]. Sounds to me like it comes from the same conversational milieu as skullduggery and such-like terms, but that’s not knowledge, it’s just my playing it by ear.
The man loves words, as do I, even if when he uses them they’re not entirely appropriate. Odd that he bubbles over and Thomas says nothing.
Speaking of words, this book cover reminds me of your avatar.
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