Much has been made over the recent ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson in Florida on the health care reform bill. The most significant point is that he chose to use the Obama administration’s arguments against them, stating that the entire law is unconstitutional.

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What I found more interesting was an argument that the law is constitutional – from a conservative legal scholar. Now the extreme stretching of the already elastic Commerce Clause was difficult enough to swallow, especially coming from this administration. But accepting the concept that forcing every American to purchase health insurance has a legal precedent in the form of jury duty and military draft is enough to cause one to choke. Seriously?

The concept was born in the mind of a legal scholar, which means that his train of thought is often on a completely different track from that of the general public. It could be said that many times the law, legal scholars, and the courts are traveling on a parallel line with common sense, with no real chance of the two ever meeting. While New York professor Rick Hills obviously believes that these two situations the courts have dealt with are similar, it is difficult to accept that declaring the health insurance mandate as constitutional could rest on previous rulings on jury duty and the military draft. His theory is based on the concept of the government having the ability to forbid inaction. While the government being able to legally coerce people into service (jury or military) through legal penalties if they failed to act might justify the fines against people that fail to obtain insurance, it doesn’t necessarily justify the mandate in the first place. In both cases, jury duty and military draft, the government pays people for their service – albeit typically lower pay than an individual would earn elsewhere. The people aren’t being forced to pay anything, technically, unlike the health insurance mandate. Now, this is a common sense analysis as opposed to a legal one. Perhaps this will turn out to be a test of our judicial system, and whether or not it will even attempt to meet that common sense line.