Scalia Says Court Can’t Be Bothered To Read Obamacare: ‘You Really Want Us To Go Through These 2,700

[onenote]

110. Both sides agreed that the court didn't have to read the entire law to decide the case.

In fact, the first Justice to make the point that he had not read every word was Justice Breyer, not Scalia. The proponents of striking down the entire law were not arguing that every provision was unconstitutional, but rather that the individual mandate was the "heart" of the law and that without it, and a couple of other provisions that even the government conceded were not severable from that provision, the rest of the law should be struck down so Congress could operate on a "clean slate." The flip side argument was that even if the mandate was unconstitutional and a couple of other provisions so intertwined with the mandate that they could not stand without the mandate, the court didn't need to consider each other provision because the presumption was that they could be severed and allowed to stand.

As Justice Breyer pointed out, if the choice wasn't either strike it all down or strike down only the few parts that both sides conceded need to be struck down, the option -- which neither side was advocating -- would be for the court to "spend a year reading all this" and having the parties argue the severability issue with respect to each provision.

While its fun to make mock of Scalia on this, the point is that neither side expected or had suggested that it was necessary or even appropriate for the court to read every provision of the law. Folks that think the court should have simply have no understanding of the legal issue being considered.