The New York Times on Mike Carvin

March 4th, 2015

Cheryl Gay Stohlberg had a fantastic profile of Mike Carvin, which generously quoted me:

In March 2012, a blunt-talking and rumpled lawyer named Michael A. Carvin told Supreme Court justices that President Obama’s health care law was an unconstitutional attempt to “regulate every activity from cradle to grave.”

He lost that case — and has never quite gotten over it.

“The operation was a success, but the patient died,” Mr. Carvin said then, insisting he had won at least a moral victory.

Now Mr. Carvin, 58, has a second chance to dismantle a law that conservatives despise. On Wednesday, he will again appear before the Supreme Court, this time on behalf of plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, a case that could cripple the Affordable Care Act — and, the White House says, deprive as many as 7.5 million Americans of their health coverage.

“The solicitor general will get up there and say, ‘Mr. Chief Justice, if you rule against us, people will lose their insurance and they may die,’ ” said Josh Blackman, the author of a book on the 2012 health care case and an assistant professor at South Texas College of Law. “No lawyer other than Michael Carvin could make the argument: ‘So what?’ ”

“So what?” is not precisely the argument Mr. Carvin will make Wednesday in confronting Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., but the phrase does come close to capturing his aggressive courtroom style. Instead he will tell the justices that Mr. Obama must be held to the letter of his own law — a principle that he argues trumps the fate of the uninsured.

Update: In one of the odd quirks of modern-day journalism, the New York Times published this story online for Wednesday morning, and updated it for the print edition for Thursday morning. My quote remains, in an altered form:

His latest case could cripple the Affordable Care Act — and, the White House says, deprive as many as 7.5 million Americans of their health coverage. Josh Blackman, the author of a book on the 2012 health care case and an assistant professor at South Texas College of Law, says Mr. Carvin is unsentimental about that.

“No lawyer other than Michael Carvin,” he said, “could make the argument: ‘So what?’ ”

“So what?” is not precisely the argument Mr. Carvin made Wednesday in confronting Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., but the phrase does come close to capturing his aggressive courtroom style. Instead, he told justices that Mr. Obama must be held to the letter of his own law — a principle that he argues trumps the fate of the uninsured.

The old version is down the memory hole.