News

Published on September 20, 2011

by Brent Baldwin
(OfficialWire)

Washington D.C. (USA)
OfficialWire PR News Bureau

Former White House lawyer, David B. Rivkin, Jr., delivered a devastating Wall Street Journal opinion piece that calls for the United Nations to stay away from the precarious issue of Palestinian statehood for its own good—if not that of the world at large.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to seek recognition of Palestine from the U.N. later this week and key members such as Russia, China, and Britain are supportive. Recognizing Palestine as a state would have major geopolitical repercussions, as Rivkin noted in his piece.

“The U.N.—General Assembly or Security Council—has no power to create states or to grant all-important formal ‘recognition’ to state aspirants,” Rivkin wrote with co-author Lee A. Casey in the September 20 article. “The right to recognize statehood is a fundamental attribute of sovereignty and the United Nations is not a sovereign.”

Rivkin emphasized that Palestine does not meet the basic criteria for statehood, including: a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Digging deeper into the response from the Obama administration, which called Palestine’s bid a “distraction,” Rivkin wrote that it was “unfortunate” that Obama failed to present the case against a Palestinian statehood resolution “in legal rather than tactical terms.” Had his administration done this, Rivkin wrote, it would “greatly reinforce the U.S. position, also providing a thoroughly neutral basis for many of our allies, particularly in Europe, to oppose Mr. Abbas's statehood bid.”

Rivkin ended the article on the U.N. with an ominous warning, reminding readers of the classic example of France supporting the infant United States’ rights to independence in 1778, which led that country into war. Fittingly, he then reminded the United Nations what it was designed to do:

“First among [its] purposes is maintaining international peace and security, and efforts prematurely to force recognition of a Palestinian state clearly undercut this goal,” Rivkin wrote. “This is, in fact, a rare instance in which a measure is bad policy, bad law, and has the real potential to damage the interests of its opponents and its supporters.”

A frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Rivkin was awarded the prestigious 2011 Burton Award for Legal Achievement for his writing in The Washington Post.

For more information, visit www.davidrivkin.com.

Source: http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=239942

Says justices will uphold America's federal system, preserve states' rights

Published on August 5, 2011

by Colin Fuess
(OfficialWire)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (USA)
OfficialWire PR News Bureau

Former White House lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr. and colleague Lee A. Casey began the debate in August 2009 with their Washington Post article, “Constitutionality of Health Insurance Mandate Questioned."

Now in their latest article for SCOTUSblog, “Why the Court Will Strike Down PPACA," Rivkin and Casey predict that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, also known as “ObamaCare”) “will be unable to withstand the Court’s scrutiny” for the very reason Rivkin and Casey gave in 2009. ObamaCare’s individual mandate that almost all Americans must purchase health insurance is unconstitutional because it does not regulate commerce, but rather forces people into it.

“[A]ny exercise of the power to regulate interstate commerce must necessarily be based upon the regulation of some voluntary activity that either directly or indirectly affects interstate commerce,” write Rivkin and Casey (emphasis theirs).

Rivkin and Casey summarize and deftly demolish the Department of Justice’s defense of the PPACA. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s representatives make arguments that to a layman’s mind border on the absurd. They insist that non-activity (not participating in the healthcare market) is still activity. Regarding the slippery slope of mandating every American buy insurance, they hope that “in the future, Congress will impose individual purchase mandates wisely and sparingly." Finally, they claim that the healthcare industry is unique in that everyone will need it at some point, even though the same goes for other markets such as housing.

To further indicate that ObamaCare has little chance of survival, Rivkin and Casey cite past Supreme Court decisions that affirm the federal system of dual sovereignty: “The Supreme Court… has consistently held that there must be some areas of life, even where there may be some remote economic impact, that constitutionally remain within the States’ regulatory authority alone.”

The DOJ’s arguments are deficient, and Supreme Court precedent points to failure.

It is inevitable that the highest court in the land will hear at least one of the lawsuits against ObamaCare. Rivkin and Casey already know those will be ObamaCare’s last days.

SCOTUSblog is devoted to comprehensively covering the U.S. Supreme Court—without bias and according to the highest journalistic and legal ethical standards. The blog is provided as a public service and is sponsored by Goldstein, Howe & Russell, P.C. For more information, visit http://www.scotusblog.com.

Source: http://officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=80785

Lawyer from 26-state lawsuit believes Justice Kennedy will undo ObamaCare

Published on June 22, 2011

by Brent Baldwin
(OfficialWire)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (USA)
OfficialWire PR News Bureau

Former White House lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr. was the first public figure to question the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. His argument has proven to be a winner in the courts.

Radio host and author Laura Ingraham recently invited Rivkin on her June 20, 2011 broadcast to talk about the president’s actions in Libya as well as give an update on the major lawsuit against ObamaCare, which is heading for a Supreme Court showdown.

Rivkin said he remains “very optimistic” that by June of next year, the statute “either in its entirety or its most objectionable provisions, will be taken down by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.”

Rivkin said the government was trying to argue that there is a limiting principle that applies to the Commerce Clause. But well over a year into the case, they were having no such luck. “You would expect the government’s arguments to be sharpened, that they would improve, that you would see some opportunities for life down the road,” Rivkin said. “Nothing like that has happened.”

Rivkin called the government’s argument the “time travel theory” and noted that even the American Medical Association was seeking to end its support of the mandate.

When asked by the host to predict the outcome at the Supreme Court level, Rivkin said he had faith that Justice Anthony Kennedy would vote against the constitutionality of the mandate. He noted that Kennedy recently wrote a majority opinion that affirmed a strong conviction that the dual sovereignty system was the essence of our constitutional architecture.

After being congratulated by Ingraham for his tireless work on the case, Rivkin said the case “went beyond healthcare . . . This is really about what kind of country we live in.”

For more information, visit www.davidrivkin.com and www.lauraingraham.com.

Source: http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=78467

Constitutional legal scholar weighs in on executive power issue

Published on June 22, 2011

by Brent Baldwin

(OfficialWire)

WASHINGTON, D.C. (USA)
OfficialWire PR News Bureau

Former White House lawyer David B. Rivkin, Jr. is often asked to explain the actions of presidents in constitutional terms.

On June 20, 2011, he appeared as a guest on the Laura Ingraham radio show to discuss the whether President Obama had exceeded his authority in the Libyan operation by not seeking congressional approval.

Rivkin noted that the War Powers Act of 1973 had been deemed unconstitutional by presidents from both parties, so while Obama had the right not to comply with the act, that did not excuse his handling of the controversial situation.

“It’s a badly executed war. The president has failed to provide any compelling justification to American people or Congress,” Rivkin said, agreeing with the host. “This administration’s view is that the War Powers Resolution does not apply because what’s happening in Libya is not ‘hostilities.’ That’s absurd.”

Rivkin noted that it “pained him” to defend the President, who “even when’s he doing the right thing, as far as the constitutional realities are concerned, cannot bring himself to articulate it in a forthright manner and resorts to semantic games.”

Rivkin said he had to support Obama’s power exercise out of his own respect for the Constitution. “It’s very difficult to defend this administration. These arguments [on Libya], that it’s not hostilities, that our goal is to not unseat Gaddafi are just absurd,” Rivkin said. “As a matter of international law, does anybody believe what is happening in Libya now is not armed conflict?

A frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, Rivkin was recently awarded the prestigious 2011 Burton Award for Legal Achievement for his writing in the Washington Post.

For more information, visit www.davidrivkin.com and www.lauraingraham.com.

Source: http://www.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=993