Shocker: Supreme Court Justices Follow Law

It would be difficult to more effectively parody Mark Joseph Stern of Slate and his approach toward the Supreme Court and the rule of written law than he himself does, with yesterday’s column on the first full opinion of the current Supreme Court term. The Court’s unanimous opinion in Arellano v. McDonough upheld the decision of the Department of Veterans Affairs to grant veterans’ benefits to a Navy veteran for psychiatric disabilities, but not retroactively. Thus, the veteran was awarded benefits from 2011 forward, rather than starting at the date of his discharge in 1981, because he waited 30 years to file for them after leaving the Navy.

This is an entirely unremarkable application of the law that was written by Congress. That is the simple and obvious explanation for why the Court was unanimous. First, the law says that the effective date for veterans’ benefits “shall not be earlier than the date of receipt of application therefor” (emphasis added). “Shall not” is as unambiguous as it gets in law-writing: You get benefits as of the day you apply for the benefits. Did Congress heartlessly write an inflexible rule with no exceptions? Or did it leave things open-ended and invite the courts to craft their own rules out of their own sense of justice?

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Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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It would be difficult to more effectively parody Mark Joseph Stern of Slate and his approach toward the Supreme Court and the rule of written law than he himself does, with yesterday’s column on the first full opinion of the current Supreme Court term. The Court’s unanimous opinion in Arellano v. McDonough upheld the decision of the Department of Veterans Affairs to grant veterans’ benefits to a Navy veteran for psychiatric disabilities, but not retroactively. Thus, the veteran was awarded benefits from 2011 forward, rather than starting at the date of his discharge in 1981, because he waited 30 years to file for them after leaving the Navy.

This is an entirely unremarkable application of the law that was written by Congress. That is the simple and obvious explanation for why the Court was unanimous. First, the law says that the effective date for veterans’ benefits “shall not be earlier than the date of receipt of application therefor” (emphasis added). “Shall not” is as unambiguous as it gets in law-writing: You get benefits as of the day you apply for the benefits. Did Congress heartlessly write an inflexible rule with no exceptions? Or did it leave things open-ended and invite the courts to craft their own rules out of their own sense of justice?