While most of the reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell has centered on the political victory for the president and the various winners and losers from the decision itself, a more far-reaching consequence has received much less notice. The legal dispute hinged around whether a law means what it says, or means what someone reading later – say, an admistration official – thinks it must have really meant, or prefers it would have meant. More generally, however, the issue raised is whether laws passed by Congress have to be administered as written, or whether a President can change the law it will in whatever what he or she thinks will be better.
