The Invisible Constitution in Comparative Perspective

of Politics, 111–98 (1962), with, e.g., Gerald Gunther, “The Subtle Vices of the ‘Passive Virtues’ –  

A Comment on Principle and Expediency in Judicial Review” (1964) 64 Colum. L. Rev. 1.

194 

132 S. Ct. 2566, 2593 (2012).

195 

NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2600.

196 

Ibid.

, at 2651–5 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

197 

See Transcript of Oral Argument at 44–50, Department of Health and Human Services v. Flor-

ida 132 S. Ct. 1618 (2012) (No. 11–398).

198 

See NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2596–7 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.).

199 

Tribe and Matz, Uncertain Justice, 66–8.

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56 

Laurence H. Tribe

a path I had publicly predicted he would take (and had argued he should take) 

months before the decision was announced.

200

What I do mean to be saying is simply that, although presented as an 

instance of constitutional avoidance, the Roberts opinion didn’t actually avoid 

any constitutional question, but instead resolved it against what Congress quite 

plainly wrote. The Chief Justice conceded that “reading” the congressional 

mandate to purchase insurance as though it offered individuals and employers 

the option of either purchasing insurance or paying a federal tax penalty for 

not doing so required rejecting by far the most natural reading of the ACA and 

replacing it with a version of the law that Congress had not actually crafted. 

But he said that he had to adopt that reading in order to avoid the more drastic 

step of striking down the ACA altogether. Thus, the Chief Justice essentially 

rewrote Congress’ handiwork so as to avoid the politically unpalatable and 

institutionally injurious result of dooming the entire ACA. In doing so, he was 

taking two significant and controversial steps.

One was a step that four dissenting justices criticized as a usurpation of 

Congress’ exclusive power to raise and collect taxes under Article I

201

 – while 

four concurring justices defended it as entirely legitimate in as much as it did 

not entail subjecting anyone to a tax liability that Congress had not in fact 

authorized, albeit under a regulatory rubric.

202

The other was a step that the four dissenters praised as a proper applica-

tion of prior Commerce Clause jurisprudence

203

 – while the four concurring 

justices attacked it as unprecedented and unjustifiable.

204

 To those four, the 

Chief had imposed a substantial and analytically incoherent new constraint 

on Congress’ Article I power to regulate interstate commerce when he insisted 

that Congress had exceeded its power to regulate commercial activity when it 

sought to create such activity by compelling supposedly “inactive” individuals 

to enter the stream of commerce.

205

 It was an instance of using faux-avoidance  

not as a genuinely interpretive technique but, rather, as a more modest  

remedy for a constitutional violation than out-and-out rejection of Congress’ 

200 

Josh  Blackman,  Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare,  183–4 (2013); 

Laurence Tribe, Chief Justice Roberts Comes into His Own and Saves the Court While Pre-

venting a Constitutional Debacle, SCOTUSblog (June 28, 2012, 3:41 P.M.), 

www.scotusblog 

.com/2012/06/chief-justice-roberts-comes-into-his-own-and-saves-the-court-while-preventing-a-

constitutional-debacle/

 [

https://perma.cc/52DM-A64R

].

201 

See NFIB, 132 S. Ct. at 2651 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

202 

See 

ibid.

, at 2612–13 (Ginsburg, J. concurring).

203 

Ibid.

, at 2645–7 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

204 

Ibid.

, at 2621–3 (Ginsburg, J. concurring).

205 

Ibid.

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