A brilliant article shows that the Founding Fathers not only
supported mandates, they passed laws imposing them. Take that,
Scalia! |Would this man have supported the health care mandate?|
National Archives/Getty Images The five conservative justices on
the Supreme Court—Thomas, Alito, Scalia, Roberts and
Kennedy—cloak themselves in the myth that they are somehow
channeling the wisdom and understanding of the Founding Fathers,
the original intent that guided the drafting of the
Constitution. I believe the premise of their argument is itself
suspect: It is not clear to me how much weight should be given
to non-textually based intent that is practically impossible to
discern more than 200 years later. Most of the issues over which
there is constitutional dispute today could not even have been
envisioned when the document was drafted. Even so, it would be
an even better response to the conservative wing’s claim of
perceived understanding of original intent to be able to refute
their claims by showing them to be