See Originalist Sin which is a brilliant article showing that the Founding Fathers not only supported mandates, they passed laws imposing them. Take that Scalia!!

So once again let’s venture into the world of the health care debate. The consensus view is that existing Commerce Clause doctrine clearly authorizes the type of mandate passed in the act—see in particular the affirmance of the statute by ultraconservative Judge Silberman of the D.C. Circuit Court.

Nonetheless, those opposing the bill insist that an individual mandate has never been done and the framers would simply not permit such an encroachment on liberty and freedom.

Some spectacular historical reporting by Professor Einer Elhauge of Harvard Law School in the New Republic thoroughly rebuts the argument. See e.g. If Health Insurance Mandates Are Unconstitutional, Why Did the Founding Fathers Back Them?

Professor Einer Elhauge has found three mandate equivalents passed into law by the early Congresses—in which a significant number of founders served—and reports that these bills were signed into law by none other than Presidents George Washington and John Adams. As Founders go, one might consider them pretty senior in the hierarchy. Their acts can probably be relied upon to give us a reasonable idea what the Founders intended to be the scope of congressional and governmental power.

Amazingly, the examples of individual mandates passed by the founders are so directly applicable that the claim that original intent precludes affirming the heath care act should become almost laughable:

* In 1790, a Congress including 20 Founders passed a law requiring that ship owners buy medical insurance for their seamen. Washington signed it into law.

* In 1792, another law signed by Washington required that all able-bodied men buy a firearm. (So much for the argument that Congress can’t force us to participate in commerce.)

* And in 1798, a Congress with *five framers*! passed a law requiring that all seamen buy hospital insurance for themselves. Adams signed this legislation.

I rest my case.

And so sorry that was too late for your debate but perhaps somebody did their homework.

So if I am understanding your point you think Obamacare will be upheld.

No. Who knows. All I am saying is that the argument that there is no precedent for it under the Commerce Clause is simply false as a matter of law and one's opinion has nothing to do with it.

People just parrot whatever is spoon-fed to them by lazy journalists who act as virtual stenographers. Given the authorities I have cited in which several founding fathers refute the "original intent" argument (a really dumb legal argument in any event) the argument falls flat on it's face.

But (see "Money Unlimited" in the recent New Yorker) given the disrespect this very 'activist' court showed for precedent and the doctrine of stare decisis in the Citizens United case (wherein it grossly overreached far beyond the issues and issued a far broader ruling than necessary to overturn prior precedent) it's impossible to tell where this will go.

The only point I am making is that 'original intent' argument re ObamaCare is EASILY refuted and the only reason such intellectual rubbish stays afloat is because there are no journalists - just propagandists.

The most shameful part is that it appears the propagandists (and even the lawyers!) on the Left were to lazy to do their homework.
Only the pit-bull Eliot Spitzer in his superb mockery titled "Origionalist Sin" blew the argument to smithereens.

I don't know what the briefs argued and it's hard to believe everyone seems to have missed the best rebuttal in the oral arguments but the did. It should embarrass the hell out of the Obama legal team that they were not armed with Spitzer's research that no Ivy League law clerk worth their salt should have missed.

Hopefully (I do not know SCOTUS civil procedure) the Obama team submitted a reply brief and redeemed it's embarrassing blunder.

But arguably Tram Obama does not need to for 'original intent' argument, itself, is spurious. Original intent presumes that there is a single, unified intent behind a text. In the case of the United States Constitution, the Philadelphia Convention was composed of over fifty men, who spent an entire summer compromising and arguing over provisions that were interpreted very differently the moment the Constitution's text became public. It is far from clear, therefore, that those fifty-plus men had—i.e. agreed upon—a single original intent of the text, or if their purposes in drafting the Constitution were predicated on personal self interest.

Even if the Convention did have a single, unified intent, it is unclear how it could reliably be determined from two centuries' distance. Moreover many of the clauses of the Constitution are relative, and were left deliberately ambiguous so the Constitution did not become ossified by orthodoxy but could remain organic and be interpreted to fit a different place in time the founders could not envision. This is actually what makes it such an enduring document for it was *intended* to specifically defy any claim that it is possible to divine a single, indisputable outcome to any specific problem or dispute. That is exactly what the founders did NOT what to happen. That’s that the judiciary is for.

For instance the 4th Amendment Right of Privacy, a ‘fundamental’ right as part of the Bill of Rights, was ‘intended’ to guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. The government needs a warrant (supported by probable cause) to tap into a land-line telephone. Now come on, how could the founders ‘intend’ that? Telephones? Conversely the government does not need a warrant for cell phone or even a land line if the other party is outside the U.S. How could the founders ‘intend' that? All that is Spitzer’s point.

I won’t, and am not competent to, deliver a treatise for my only point was and is that if the ‘original intent’ of the Commerce Clause and lack of precedent are the best arguments the Right can come up with they didn’t just shoot themselves in the foot, they put their foot in their mouths before the pulled the trigger and Spitzer did a marvelous job of mockery. In the end the ‘original intent’ argument may simply be deem to laughably by SCOUTS to take it very seriously but if they do then Spitzer seems to have slammed that door in their face and nailed it shut. The argument seems risible.