Over at Vox, Adrianna (whom we miss and hope will come back to TIE soon) has written up an interview with me about common misconceptions relating to Halbig. My favorite bit:
AM: What do you make of the D.C. Circuit’s use of other examples of “bad policy” within the Affordable Care Act — the problems in Guam and the U.S. territories, for example — to suggest that this might just be another example of Congress not thinking through the consequences of their legislation?
NB: Well, it’s very strange to point to a portion of the law that’s not working, and say that because it doesn’t work well, other portions of the law might not work well, so we’re relieved of any responsibility to interpret the statute in a manner that could make it work well.
I would have thought that the best approach would be to try to make the statute work as well as possible given the constraints of the statutory text, and not to spike the legislation out of a misplaced fidelity to a piece of legislative text shorn of context.
Go read the whole thing! Or just check out Adrianna’s take on Jon Stewart’s rant about the decisions. It’s pretty much the same thing but with jokes.
