I don't want to criticize the core argument of Neal Katyal's New York Times op-ed on the health care decision -- it's good that he's pointing out the ways that the decision may have quite a few future consequences you and I won't like. If I have a quibble with what the Georgetown law professor wrote, it's with this sentence:
But one thing is apparent: Americans are growing increasingly comfortable, if not always happy, with the idea of nine men and women in Washington handing down rulings that remove decisions from the legislative process or even rewrite legislation altogether.Er, no -- Americans aren't "growing increasingly comfortable" with this. Maybe the ones Katyal knows personally are growing comfortable with it, but they're a tiny, tiny minority of the population -- the people who actually have some influence, however slight, on how the important stuff gets done in America. The rest of us just shrug and accept legislative stonewalling, corporate rapaciousness, and all the other things done by America's Big Kahunas -- what are we supposed to do about it? Who the hell listens to us?
This change in jurisprudence is just more of the same. Ordinary schmucks have no control over it. Ordinary schmucks have very little influence. We're not comfortable. We're just resigned -- to this and to whatever else gets trickled down on our heads from the lofty folks above us.
