Libertarian legal scholar Randy Barnett, a former Boston University professor who now teaches at Georgetown, fulfilled a lifelong wish three years ago when he appeared in a low-budget sci-fi movie — a genre-blending legal drama about an adolescent parasite from outer space. Most critics ignored it.
Some of Barnett’s interpretations of the US Constitution have been similarly snubbed by his colleagues in the academic mainstream, dismissed as fantasy from the fringe.
But now, Barnett has vaulted into the vanguard of the conservative movement and earned national recognition for developing the basis of successful legal challenges of President Obama’s health care law. His theory on the limits of federal authority appears destined to be examined by the Supreme Court and may end up redefining congressional power.
“Randy has advanced his theories from something widely dismissed to something that must be taken very seriously,’’ said Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Two federal judges have ruled all or part of the health care law unconstitutional, based largely on broad arguments credited to Barnett.
That has made Barnett a media star of small-government conservatives. He has argued against the law on talk radio and Glenn Beck’s television program; in guest columns for Politico, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal; and in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Barnett, 59, argues that the law’s requirement that almost all Americans obtain health insurance by 2014 is a government intrusion.
Such a mandate is unconstitutional, Barnett says, because the Constitution’s Commerce Clause — the underpinning of much federal regulation — does not give Congress the power to compel Americans to buy a product. In this case, the product is health insurance.
To put his view another way, Congress cannot regulate inactivity as commerce.
“Giving the Congress the power to do these mandates is essentially giving the Congress the power to take over your life,’’ he declared in an interview.
The health care “joke”. Has any one really read the entire bill? No! In this piece of legislations there are numerous troves that have yet to come to light. Unlike more Americans, this piece of trash has created several, new sub sets of health care reform that has no legal basis and are completely unconstitutional. New laws in health care a changing so rapidly, that by the time the new committees are formed to in act newly mandate legislation, the committee is useless. Health and Human Service has the “legal right” to review all medicare treatment in 2013, and make recommendations to terminate some surgical and medical care, including chemo therapy..the death lists. Your current health care is in the hands of people that if they did not work for the government would be on the unemployment list,,Smile Yes, every American is screwed unless you have exemption..WOW! Even opie’s limo has en exemtion, so you know where you stand
Heard on the local news tonite: They stated that the Obama admin says Obamacare is Constitutional because it allows the government to regulate inter-state commerce.
While that may be true, the Constitution does not allow the government to force people into engaging in inter-state commerce, just to be able to regulate it.
Based on that alone, which doesn’t allow for the government to “fine”, or tax people who don’t purchase healthcare, and the fact that there is no “severability clause” within the law, the entire law becomes un-Constitutional.
And that is just the argument against Obamacare regarding it’s Constitutionality. You still have the arguments against it’s economic viability as well.