How Antonin Scalia Reads Laws

In June, when the Supreme Court upheld President Obama’s health care reform, Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion declared that the individual mandate’s “minimum coverage provision” shall not be considered a penalty, as the law itself says, but rather a tax, “because it functions like a tax.” The court’s dissent, one joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, argued that this decision “suggests the existence of a creature never hitherto seen.” Let’s call that monstrous and mythical creature Penalty That Is Also Tax. Because the legislation contains the word “penalty” and because words mean what words mean, the dissent insists on a reading that sees dictionary definitions of “tax” and “penalty” as mutually exclusive. Given the scope and significance of the new law, this may be some indication of how significant certain dictionaries weirdly still are.