Update: Transcript of argument in Florida v. Jardines is here, and Florida v. Harris here. Washington Post recap here.

Will the Supreme Court keep the 4th Amendment from going to the dogs?

The Supreme Court held two hours of oral argument today on the constitutionality of using drug-sniffing dogs at private homes, and the reliability of the dogs. Background here and at Scotus Blog here. Wired reports here, and the LA Times here.

Upholding ACA, laying groundwork to strike down New Deal

Yesterday, a happy day for many of us, where the Affordable Care Act was upheld in a 5-4 decision (PDF) authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, there is a dark cloud attached. The Chief Justice accepted the federal government's argument that Congress had exercised its taxing power in enacting the mandate. But rather than being a judicial minimalist and deciding only those constitutional questions that must be decided, the Roberts Court bulled on to decide issues that need not have been addressed—whether the mandate exceeded the Congress' Commerce and Necessary and Proper power.

And the Roberts opinion on the scope of the national government's power to address national problems is a shot across the bow to the Supreme Court's New Deal jurisprudence that underpins our modern national government.

(Continue reading below the fold)

The opinion is here.

Here'a a new thread to discuss the Supreme Court decision and related topics. (I haven't read it yet, I just got out of court. I'll chime in later, I'm sure.)

BTD - Radio most of the day but I promise to discuss ACA here at Talk Left tomorrow if anyone is still interested.

BTD will be on the radio (please join him), and I'll be getting ready for court when the Supreme Court releases its historic decision on the Affordable Care Act. The decision will be available on the court's website.

According to C-Span, these are the four issues:

• Whether the court has jurisdiction over a tax law that has yet to take effect,
• Whether the individual mandate is constitutional,
• Whether the court can strike down only part of the law without striking down the law in its entirety,
• And whether the law's extension of Medicaid is constitutional.

Put even simpler, the decision will address jurisdiction, the individual mandate, the fate of the rest of the law — and separately, the Medicaid provision.

For the legal-minded among you, check out ScotusBlog. It's plain English version (which maybe should be called plain English for lawyers) is here. Here are some potential scenarios in plain English as to the effects of the ruling should it go one way or the other.

Here's a thread to discuss all aspects of the decision and the potential effects -- legal, economic, political, and personal.

Thursday morning, starting at 9 am ET, Daily Kos Radio will be presenting live coverage and reaction to the Supreme Court's momentous decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. You can listen here. We'll be taking calls as well (Skype calls preferred.) What we'll be talking about - via Adam B:

I think Andrew Koppelman gets it in one paragraph:

The philosophy they relied upon, which I’ll call Tough Luck Libertarianism, holds that property rights are absolute and any redistribution to care for the sick violates those rights. If you’re sick, and you can’t afford to pay for medical care with your own money, that’s your tough luck. The judges’ willingness to read this notion into the Constitution is very big news, dwarfing even the fate of the ACA, which is itself the most important social legislation in decades.

Unsurprisingly, Randy Barnett touts Charles Lane's unconcern that the New Deal jurisprudence will be overturned. Lane writes:

What, then, led the [liberal] academics to misread this [ACA] case [sic]? In a sense, they resemble the conservative leaders of the bar at the dawn of the New Deal. President Franklin Roosevelt’s alphabet soup of federal programs ran counter to established doctrine denying the constitutionality of economic and social legislation, state or federal. Steeped in that tradition, many legal experts recoiled in horror at FDR’s plans.

Amid a Great Depression, and under tremendous pressure from a popular president and his huge congressional majority, however, this expert consensus gave way. The Supreme Court abandoned its laissez faire understanding of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause (among other provisions) so as to permit New Deal programs.

Lane seems to believe our Constitutional history began during the Lochner Era. McCulloch v. Maryland? Never heard of it says Lane. Gibbons v. Ogden? What's that says Lane. But forget all that.

Lane (and Barnett) are happy to see the New Deal jurisprudence overturned. This is the conservative project. This is the Constitution in Exile movement. Janice Rogers Brown explained it clearly and forthrightly (PDF):

For those who may have missed it, I wrote a number of posts on the challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Here are links to some of them:

Bloomberg: 'Obama health law seen valid, scholars expect rejection'

The SCOTUS: Is an extreme constitutional winter coming?

What's at stake: The SCOTUS and undoing The New Deal

Prof. Jack Balkin on 'Living Originalism' and the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act

The contorted contours of Congressional power according to the radical Roberts Court

When The Court Said Congress Could Regulate "Inactivity"

Supreme Court: Is the mandate severable from Affordable Care Act? Is Medicaid expansion permitted?

Supreme Court, Affordable Care Act: Is the mandate constitutional?

One perspective regarding the Supreme Court and the Affordable Care Act

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, today ruled that juvenile sentences to life without parole violate the 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The opinion is here.

The Supreme Court has invalidated three of the four parts of Arizona's controversial immigration law, SB 1070, but it left intact for now the "show me your papers" provision, saying that part could take effect, although it may be subject to future challenges. The opinion is here.

The clueless Governor of AZ called the decision a victory. [More...]

Last night, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke at a conference hosted by the American Constitution Society. While not giving any clues to how the court will rule on the Affordable Care Act, Arizona's immigration law, or other important cases still to be decided this term, she did say the justices were in "sharp disagreement."

"As one may expect, many of the most controversial cases remain pending," she noted. "So it is likely that the sharp disagreement rate will go up next week and the week after."

In the context of the healthcare law, she described the individual mandate issue this way: [More...]

At balkinization, Jack Balkin points to his Atlantic article in which he discusses a 1950 taxing power case that seems clinching to me with regard to whether the individual mandate penalty is constitutional as a valid exercise of Congress' taxing power. I'm surprised it was not discussed more (and feel remiss in not having discussed it myself.) Balkin writes:

It also doesn't matter that the real purpose of the tax is to regulate behavior. Lots of taxes are designed to do just that -- think about taxes on polluters as an example -- and federal taxes on drugs are designed to keep people from buying or selling them. In 1950, the Court upheld a tax on marijuana, explaining that "a tax does not cease to be valid merely because it regulates, discourages, or even definitely deters the activities taxed. The principle applies even though the revenue obtained is obviously negligible . . . or the revenue purpose of the tax may be secondary." "Nor does a tax statute necessarily fall," the Court added, "because it touches on activities which Congress might not otherwise regulate" under its other enumerated powers. So even if the mandate is beyond the commerce power, it can still be a constitutional exercise of the power to tax and spend for the general welfare.

The 1950 case Balkin is referring to is U.S. v. Sanchez: