Or the actual words of the law?

With a rudimentary PowerPoint presentation, Mr. Christina sketched a new line of argument. He pointed to four previously unnoticed words in the health care law, enacted nine months earlier. They seemed to say its tax-credit subsidies were limited to people living where an insurance marketplace, known as an exchange, had been “established by the state.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/us/politics/in-four-word-phrase-challenger-spied-health-care-laws-vulnerability.html?_r=0

Guess sometime in June we will know the decision?
 

Last edited by Common Sense (3/04/2015 3:48 pm)

In the law, you do not just look at text, you also look at context.

You cannot simply cherry pick some words out of a document and disregard the entirity of the document. If that were the case, our legal system would be in big trouble.

Last edited by BYOB (3/04/2015 8:10 pm)

Worth a read ---> The Libertarians Who Got SCOTUS and Congress to Consider the Unthinkable

The fact that King v. Burwell made it to the Supreme Court is a triumph for years of libertarian organizing, thinking, and suing, in Washington and in schools across America. Libertarian lawyers and activists convinced the entire Republican polity that a case to blow up the ACA's subsidies system was winnable. They rattled Democrats who—for the second time—underestimated the legal vulnerability of the law. And they were hardly finished. The King case and its aftermath showed just how ambidextrous these challengers could be.

When the first subsidies cases were filed and argued, defenders of the ACA viewed them as not just obscure but dilatory. They warred with Case Western law professor Jonathan Adler and Cato Institute scholar Michael Cannon, who churned out arguments about how ending the subsidies would follow the law and liberate 36 states from mandates. Progressive health care reporters compared the case to an episode of Seinfeld in which George Constanza insists that "the Moops," not the Moors, conquered Spain, because a typo said so.

Since then, libertarians have routed the law's defenders on several fronts. Kerpen helped make Gruber infamous by publicizing the video research of Rich Weinstein, a Philadelphia investment advisor who was angry about what the ACA did to his own care. The idea that Democrats always meant for subsidies to be denied to states that did not set up exchanges, which appeared to be a reach, was bolstered by multiple Gruber quotes. Dismayed Democrats went from arguing that the subsidies case was ridiculous, to denying that Gruber played much of a role in the law's construction. Republicans called Gruber before an oversight committee to take turns pummeling him; reporters chased him out the door as the fallen wonk dodged questions. (Since then, Gruber has been removed from advisory jobs by the Democratic governor of Vermont and the Republican governor of Massachusetts.)

When King was taken up by the high court, libertarians gave Congress another great idea. In an op-ed for USA Today, Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett warned that the court was "reluctant to invalidate a law on which many relied." The solution was for Republicans in Congress to write a replacement bill. "It will be far easier for the justices to enforce the law's existing language if they know there is a viable alternative that can be enacted by both houses of Congress and signed by the president within a week of their ruling," Barnett wrote. 

This year, as the arguments approached, senators and congressmen in key committees started promising Obamacare fixes. They largely followed the advice of Avik Roy, a conservative health care wonk who argued that Republicans could set up an "alternative, more market-based" system if the subsidies were struck down. Two days before King v. Burwell arguments began, Representatives Paul Ryan, John Kline, and Fred Upton published an op-ed promising an "off-ramp" for states if the plaintiffs won. It would be "a legislative alternative that leads them away from an expensive health-care wreck and toward a patient-centered system." (Ryan, Upton, and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch all attended the arguments.)

Avik Roy made it to Wednesday's arguments. He got to hear Scalia take up a version of this argument, and insist that the Congress would fix the law. After exiting the court, standing near the attorneys who were holding press conferences in front of more than a dozen cameras, Roy surmised that the serious conservative arguments for a post-subsidies health care system had sunk in. "I think the most recent op-ed, by Ryan, Klein, and Upton, had a level of detail that made it more credible," he said.

Cannon and Adler, who had exited the court and were standing nearby, agreed with Roy. "The fact that members of Congress are looking at this and kicking around ideas means that they are being proactive," said Cannon. "If anything gums up that process it appears it's going to be the administration."

=13pxScalia describes his adherence to textualism. Textualism means interpreting the text of written law without going beyond the intent of those legislators who made the law. He writes that judges have no authority to pursue "broader purposes."  - Lager

How is taking the sentences from right before and right after those few words "going beyond the intent of the legislators who made the law"? They passed the law knowing the intent. Law of any kind is nothing but intent. You can't make a law with random words grouped together. The purpose of any written language is to display the intent of the writer.

 This is nothing more than some in the Congress looking for any way they can to get rid of something they passed before, but decided they now don't like. Should everyone everywhere be able to clog up the court systems because they changed their mind, or are pissed they didn't win in a democracy where majority rules? If so, I've decided that I don't like the terms of my credit cards, even though I signed my name and agreed to the terms when I got them. Should I be able to sue because I changed my mind?
 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2015/03/03/clear-language-or-clear-intent-supreme-court-hears-obamacare-subsidies-case/