2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Roy Karrde]

I was just stating what a survey of some law clerks who worked for the Justices said.

You know Politico breached that today, and many other pundits and law professors that were predicting victory before the arguments even started.

In the orgy of panel discussions, interviews and feature articles previewing this week’s arguments, law professors, Supreme Court litigators and journalists confidently predicted that the justices would uphold the individual mandate as a logical extension of the federal government’s well-established ability to regulate the health insurance market.

Harvard law professor Charles Fried, a solicitor general himself in the Reagan era, famously promised a couple of years ago to eat his Kangaroo skin hat if the Supreme Court struck down the law.

Within the first few minutes of Tuesday’s arguments, that bravado seemed to go out the window.

“Eventually, the conventional wisdom will catch up with reality,” Goldstein joked. “It’s absolutely true that this argument has gotten the back of the hand from the legal glitterati, including myself.”

The final word won’t come for months, Goldstein said, “but I’ll tell you [the challengers] are doing the high-fives today. … They’re not doing them at the Department of Justice.”

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...2-EE824B8E1A77

I think the fact that those supporting the law have a tougher battle was dismissed until, well the bitch slap that was given to the supporters this morning. And the stuttering, scared, lawyer who had trouble making coherent statements in support of the law in front of the court did not help them at all.