As complied by Andrew Sullivan.
I want to highlight the following comment since it touches on the principle issue brought forward in the argument: what is the limiting principle that guarantees that mandates do not go further than the individual mandate?
“Limiting principle” is a phrase that came up a lot in the Supreme Court Tuesday morning - 15 times, according to the transcript. It’s a legal concept you’ll probably hear a lot about in this afternoon’s analysis.
When courts review a new application of Congress’s constitutional authority, they historically wanted to see the government articulate a clear limit to those powers - they look for, in legal jargon, a “limiting principle.”
“If Justice Anthony M. Kennedy can locate a limiting principle in the federal government’s defense of the new individual health insurance mandate, or can think of one on his own, the mandate may well survive,” writes SCOTUSBlog’s Lyle Denniston. “ But if he does not, the mandate is gone.”
