“We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes and we say, ‘Well, if this is wrong, the Congress will fix it.’ But then we hear that Congress can’t pass a bill one way or the other. That there is gridlock. Some people say that should affect the way we interpret the statutes,” Kennedy said Monday. ”That seems to me a wrong proposition. We have to assume that we have three fully functioning branches of the government, government that are committed to proceed in good faith and with good will toward one another to resolve the problems of this republic.”
Court experts immediately grabbed onto the comments, which were in response to a question from Florida GOP Rep. Ander Crenshaw about “politically-charged issues” before the Court, as a likely reference to the furor over King v. Burwell.
Josh Blackman, an assistant professor of law at the South Texas College of Law who specializes in the Supreme Court, points out that strategy to put pressure on the Court due to Congress’s reaction even made its way into the courtroom — much to the chagrin of at least one justice.
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