En weer een aardig voorbeeld van dommige, kritiekloze verslaggeving over de Verenigde Staten in de Nederlandse media. Dit maal is het de NRC.

Ze schrijven:

 Elf Amerikaanse staten leggen zich niet neer bij de hervorming van de gezondheidszorg, waarmee het Huis van Afgevaardigden zondagavond heeft ingestemd. Ze willen een rechtszaak beginnen tegen de nieuwe wet.

In de betreffende elf staten, zijn de Republikeinen aan de macht. Zij verzetten zich tegen de verplichte basisverzekering. Die is volgens hen in strijd met de Amerikaanse grondwet en schendt de soevereiniteit van alle vijftig staten waaruit de Verenigde Staten bestaan. Zodra president Obama de wet ondertekent – dat is waarschijnlijk vandaag – , zullen de ministers van Justitie van deze staten juridische stappen ondernemen.

Het gaat om de staten Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alabama en Washington. Idaho, dat vorige week de verplichte basisverzekering verbood, sluit zich mogelijk bij ze aan.

O, o, wat nu. Never mind dat deze rechtszaken in de V.S. zelf door juristen als, nou ja, kansloos worden gezien. Artikel 1, Sectie 8 van de Constitution – de “Commerce Clause” - geeft de federale regering bevoegdheden om de nationale economie te reguleren. Hierop is (ik noem maar wat) de hele New Deal gebaseerd. En het is de constitutionaliteit van health care reform die nu door deze Republikeinse politici in de staten wordt aangevochten.

Matthew Yglesias:

But to review, Article I Section 8 of the constitution gives authorizes congress:

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.

There’s long been a strain of thought which says this should be interpreted simply as a prohibition on state-level trade barriers with Commerce “among the several States” understood as basically about transporting goods across state lines. But from the beginning, the federal government’s powers have been interpreted rather more expansively than that. We had the Louisiana Purchase, the Bank of the United States, Henry Clay’s “American System,” a transcontinental railroad, land grant colleges, etc. And in particular since the New Deal the commerce clause has always been understood as granting wide-ranging authority to regulate the national economy.

Over the past 20 years the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has started to reel this authority in somewhat, declaring that the Violence Against Women Act and the Gun Free Schools Act aren’t really about commerce and that economic impacts were cited in the legislative history as just a kind of pretext. But nobody can seriously deny that health reform is a bona fide regulation of economic activity for an economic purpose. I know people who claim to seriously believe that it would be a good idea for the Supreme Court to reverse the past 75 years of jurisprudence and just enact libertarianism by fiat (I feel like these people aren’t thinking seriously about the consequences of this) but that’s a vague aspiration, not something a lawsuit launched in 2010 is going to accomplish.

The Wonk Room:

[These] lawsuits seem as frivolous as the tort cases Republicans rally against. As Professor Timothy Jost of Washington & Lee University School of Law explained this morning on Washington Journal, “under the constitution as it has been interpreted by the Supreme Court — and that is really our constitution. Everyone has their own interpretation, but constitutional law is made by the Supreme Court — over the last 80 years, I do not see any serious problem with this legislation, and Congress did not either.” Jost noted that the individual requirement, which does not apply to anyone who is under the filing limit of $12,000 for individuals or $16,000 for couples or levy a criminal penalty for those who go without insurance — will likely stand up to a constitutional challenge.