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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

The individual mandate "may violate the constitution of Ayn Rand, but they do not violate the Constitution of the United States."

Said Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said today, in oral arguments before the Eleventh Circuit, as reported by Sasha Volokh, who quips "Mr. Herbert Spencer, call your office."

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The quip refers to the Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. dissent in Lochner v. New York:
The liberty of the citizen to do as he likes so long as he does not interfere with the liberty of others to do the same, which has been a shibboleth for some well known writers, is interfered with by school laws, by the Post Office, by every state or municipal institution which takes his money for purposes thought desirable, whether he likes it or not. The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics.
Lochner is a much-deprecated case from 1905.

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