I don’t understand Kennedy’s argument. It stands to reason that a bill that has unconstitutional provisions may also actually have constitutional provisions. Now, the individual mandate may make the entire bill unconstitutional as a whole.
I understand Kennedy’s argument.
This is a piece of legislation. It arose from another branch of government. It would be more of a court intrusion into the legislative process of the other branch for the COURT to go through the bill line by line and rule on constitutionality and serverability, than it would be to simply strike down the entirity of it and let the legislature once again act, or not act, on a legislative matter.
Scalia made the same point, only using different words. It really isn’t the role of the COURT to micro examine a tortured, complex piece of legislation of almost 3,000 pages. Courts are there to get to the essence of a matter, the heart of the issue, and make a ruling.