@Nechomah i believe yytz is referring to scalia and breyer’s views on the 6th amendment which is the right to due process which includes things like the right to confront your accuser, laws governing sentencing, juries etc. with some spillover into the 4th amendment in regards to search and seizure.
@2scents your premiums were going up no matter what happened
@nfgo3 of course politics and the president influence the courts decision albeit indirectly. If you want a good book on the subject read – Lee Epstein and Jack Knight, The Choices Justices Make. This was a textbook for one of my classes.
@yytz the individual mandate actually was ruled unconstitutional by a majority of the court – it only survived as a tax. i fail to understand how they could have ruled on the case because no one had standing because the tax never happened yet which is precisely why Verrilli argued it was not a tax – this points to an evolving position on the part of Roberts. I think this was a brilliant move by Roberts as he doesn’t get into an altercation with Obama and maintains the courts position as a ruling body while creating an environment where it would take only 51 votes in the senate to overturn the individual mandate and possibly the whole law.