"Do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authority under the constitution" for the individual mandate?
"Do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorisation under the constitution?" he asked.
He later told Mr. Verrilli that the federal government faced "a heavy burden of justification" and pressed him to articulate "some limits on the commerce clause" of the Constitution.
If that is so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?" Every premise of that question was a misperception.
"Do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorisation under the constitution?" he asked the US solicitor-general, Donald Verrilli, who was defending the law.
"If that is so, do you not have a heavy burden of justification?" "Can you identify for us some limits on the commerce clause?" he asked.
That left Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in his usual position as the swing vote, and he asked some tough questions, at one point suggesting the government faced "a heavy burden of justification".
Early on in this morning's session, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, said that the U.S. government had a "very heavy burden of justification" to show that an individual mandate to purchase health-care insurance was constitutional.
From the Wall Street Journal: Mr. Kennedy has been challenging Solicitor General Donald Verrilli to answer what the justice says is a "very heavy burden of justification" to show where the Constitution authorizes Congress to change the relation of the individual to the government.
As lawyer and ethicist Jack Marshall wrote on his Ethics Alarm website: "Such dishonest exercises involving the intentional deception of hundreds of people carry a heavy burden of justification".
