Monday wisdom from Stephen L. Hall
With the now spreading idea that socialized medicine violates the 13th Amendment of the Constitution, the left has become increasingly desperate to justify their desired goals with any rationalization they can find within the Constitutional framework.
The inescapable truth is that if a person has a “right” to healthcare, then someone must provide that health care. If no one is willing to provide such care, whether there is not enough money to pay them the salary they demand or they simply refuse regardless of the money offered, then such “right” must mean that their services can be compelled against their will.
The 13th Amendment clearly prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude, except for criminals, thus the leftists are coming up against a wall in this forced labor concept.
One of their desperate moves is to attempt to canonize language of the Declaration of Independence as Constitutional rights and doctrine. In particular, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
They particularly latch onto the “unalienable right” to “life”, conveniently skipping over the “endowed by their Creator” language and refusing to acknowledge that “right to life” having any bearing upon the issue of abortion. No, to the leftists, the “right to life” can only mean the right to socialized medicine and universal healthcare.
They are not pressing this claim too hard because of these other obvious implications and just how easy it is to point out that the Declaration of Independence is not the Constitution, so they are casting their eyes around for any language they can find to justify their foregone conclusion that everyone has a unalienable and universal right to healthcare, by which they only mean socialized medicine.
In response to Woot pointing out the largest fallacy and Constitutional failing of the left’s argument for universal healthcare, aka socialized medicine, as a Constitutional right that such a right must, in the extreme, force the government to dictate and command that doctors and nurses provide such healthcare against their will, a commentor stated that the Constitution already grants one person the right to another person’s labor.
“The right to an attorney is LITERALLY a right to another person’s labor. Try another argument.” @sizactaylor
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” – Amendment VI of the US Constitution.
It is this last phrase of the 6th Amendment, “to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence”, which in desperation the leftists are grasping to defend their push to convince a gullible public that socialized medicine is Constitutional.
Does it? “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” It certainly sounds like it, at least superficially.
Why then, the phrase “have the assistance of counsel” instead of a straightforward “have counsel”?
Well, quite simply, the Constitution contemplates the idea that a more nefarious court, in order to get a more favorable verdict for the state, might be so inclined to bar the defendant’s counsel from the courtroom, in some fashion or other. Perhaps they will schedule a hearing quickly and without notice, perhaps in the middle of the night, or may simply deny such counsel entry into the room, or deny the accused the very ability to contact his solicitor.
It was not really contemplated that the accused would not have a solicitor. It was neither contemplated that it was actually the duty of the state to make certain that an indigent accused would even have counsel. An attorney is even today, and in the 18th Century, something if a luxury good and somewhat costly. An accused was allowed an attorney, if he could afford one, and if he could not was obliged to defend himself against any spurious accusations.
It is quite a foreign concept to us in this modern age that a trial could be held without a defense attorney in a criminal trial, growing up with Miranda Rights being read at every arrest on television specifying that an attorney will be provided if you can’t afford one. But that notion came about years later as one of the Social Reforms to help out the poor.
The writers of the Constitution certainly never contemplated that an attorney was a necessity much less a right, helpful of course, but not a necessity. That is surprisingly modern interpretation of the 6th Amendment, going back to 1963 in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). The State of Florida at that time only provided indigent people court appointed counsel in cases of a capital crime.
Even today if accused of a minor transgression such as a traffic offense, which is still technically a misdemeanor, you are not entitled to a defense attorney.
However, let us suppose that the Gideon interpretation is correct, that the Constitution does demand that a criminal defendant have the actual right to counsel, not merely the right to the assistance of counsel as it actually says. What would happen in the extreme case where every attorney simply refuses to represent a defendant deemed so repugnant as to offend the delicate sensibilities of lawyers.
If the state is compelled to provide a defendant an attorney, and no attorney is willing to take the case, may the state then force an attorney to represent the defendant? Let us look to the area of Contract Law for a close analogy considering the attorney’s services to be a kind of “specific performance” akin to the performance of an entertainer.
The courts have stated that in certain instances, even though the performer has breached their contractual duty and ought, by the terms of the contract, be compelled to perform as previously agreed, because there is no way to assure that the performer would put forth a good faith effort to perform up to the level of their ability, and no possible way for the court to actually force the performer to do so, that “specific performance” of certain contracts are impracticable.
It is in that vein that an attorney’s work must be viewed, as there is no way that the court could ever be able to assure the attorney put forth the requisite diligence, effort, and eloquence that a vigorous defense would demand. In other words, the court could not force the attorney to represent someone against the attorney’s will because they could never be assured of the attorney adequately representing the defendant.
As the court could not order the “specific performance” of an attorney, what is left?
If the defendant has a right to be represented, and no such representation is available, then the case quite simply could not proceed. The state would have no choice but to not prosecute the defendant upon those criminal charges.
Because to prosecute without a defense would violate the defendant’s rights, but to compel the defense would violate the attorney’s rights in violation of the 13th Amendment. So the only viable option would be to not prosecute.
In the alternative, (that is fancy lawyer-speak for “even if you don’t agree with my premise I just said and you think I’m wrong, then I still win for the following reasons”), suppose that the 6th Amendment does create the right to counsel, and thus the defendant does have a right to the attorney’s labor, the 13th Amendment would supercede the 6th Amendment, thus nullifying that clause and eliminating any such right.
For those non-attorneys, to supercede in the legal sense is the principle that if a law passed later in time contradicts in some manner a previous law, the more recent law must legally prevail and the older law becomes obsolete and meaningless. (But only to that extent of the contradiction.)
Thus, where the 13th Amendment forbids involuntary servitude, your 6th Amendment right to counsel must give way to the rights of the attorney to not be enslaved.
So, no matter which way you view it, the left is still left scrambling to Constitutionally justify a “right to healthcare” because the state cannot compel those very healthcare providers into a form of socialist slavery. And they cannot justify a “right to healthcare” on either the 6th Amendment or the Declaration of Independence.
Rest assured, they will continue looking for something to justify their desires; they are just that stubborn.
