Saturday, January 16, 2010

akremer pitches forward into the abyss, or maybe just the ditch!

In a comment to Spot’s post about health insurance mandates, What do George Will and Tim Dolan have in Common?, the comment conversation veered into the ditch about insurance law mandates and driving rights in general. This is tangential to the topic of that post, but it should be fun.

akremer asserts in a comment (Echo doesn’t seem to provide links to comments the way that Haloscan did) that “there is no constitutional right to drive a car.” (Laying aside equal protection rights if driving is permitted, a proposition to which akremer agrees.) The sadistic SOBs and DOBs called law professors – Spot is not one; heaven forfend – love things called hypotheticals, torture often based on analyzing assumed fact situations unlikely or impossible in the real world.

So here’s the hypothetical:

The EPA – and the Congress, if you wish – decide to ban private automobiles as part of an effort to get greenhouse gases under control. You must further assume (because Spot says you must and because it is true) that the EPA and Congress have the power to regulate green house gases.

Can you get akremer back on the road? And if so, how?

There is one additional assumption: you can’t use the ballot box to do it; in other words, assume there is no legislative solution is on the horizon.

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