STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, APRIL 9, 2012…..Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat contender for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Scott Brown, issued a broadside Monday against the Supreme Court, which she said had gotten "involved in policymaking" by questioning the constitutionality of a federal health care law.

"I feel pretty strongly that constitutional issues, it seems to me, are pretty clear about the capacity of the United States Congress to pass a bill like the Affordable Care Act," Warren told reporters, referring to the name supporters have given to the federal health care law signed by President Obama in 2010. "The Supreme Court, however, as I listened to those arguments, seems to want to wade into making their own political judgments."

Warren is the latest Democrat to publicly question the court's impartiality over its consideration of whether some or all of the health care law is unconstitutional. The law is the subject of a lawsuit brought by 26 states that could invalidate one of Obama's signature policy achievements in the heat of his reelection campaign. The suit was primarily focused on the law's requirement that millions of Americans obtain health insurance, known as the individual mandate. The states argued that provision is an unconstitutional incursion on liberty.

Warren said she worried that the law was built upon the individual mandate.

"As it has currently been structured, the individual mandate is part of the economic driver of how to make the insurance policies for everyone work, and I think particularly critical for small businesses," she said. "And so the economics of it without the individual mandate really seem to shift dramatically."

Would she support rebuilding the law from scratch if the individual mandate is repealed? "Well, it depends on what the Supreme Court does," she said. "Now that the Supreme Court has decided they're going to get involved in policymaking we're all gonna have to see the direction the court goes and figure out the right response."

Brown voted against the federal health care law and has supported its repeal. But he has taken a more nuanced position than other Republicans because in 2006, as a state senator, he voted in support of the state law signed by Gov. Mitt Romney that requires all Massachusetts residents to obtain insurance if they are able to afford it.

The sixth anniversary of the Massachusetts law arrives Thursday.

Days before Romney signed the law, Brown called the proposal a "nice effort" but worried that some provisions that penalize companies who don't offer health care to workers could drive business out of Massachusetts.

"I'm just curious about the businesses and how they're going to be affected, whether we're just taxing them into moving to New Hampshire or down to North Carolina," he said at the time. "That's what I need to zero in on. I think the governor's probably going to veto portions of this," Brown said.

Warren's comments came after an immigrant advocacy day on Beacon Hill. Brown was invited but did not attend. A spokesman said he was touring a local medical device company and he declined comment on News Service inquiries about Warren's remarks and his views on the high court proceedings.

Democrats' questions about the politicization of the Supreme Court, including public statements by Obama, have stirred Republicans to charge that they're attempting to pressure the court to uphold the health care law. Obama walked back some of his initial comments, contending he believes the court's precedent granting latitude to Congress to enact laws affecting interstate commerce should be sufficient to affirm the health care law's constitutionality. Gov. Deval Patrick has echoed those thoughts as well.

Attorney General Martha Coakley told the News Service last week that the court's action would likely have no "direct impact" on Massachusetts, the only state in the nation that has passed its own mandate for individuals to obtain health insurance.

"Ours is a state court statute that hasn't been seriously challenged under our constitution. I believe it would be upheld under our constitution," she said. "Some of those benefits ... that come from national health care, we just won't see. I don't think it directly impacts in the short-run what we've been doing."

Senate President Therese Murray, one of six lawmakers on a conference committee that shaped the Massachusetts law, said she was "not worried" about the court's impact on Massachusetts. She told reporters during a recent availability that that the only potential effect would arise if the court invalidated the entire federal health law, which she said would impact the level of Medicaid assistance the state gets from Washington, as well as research funding.

"We already have health care - pretty much a type of universal health care - where almost all of our citizens have insurance, so now we have to tackle the cost of that," she said. "They're way behind us on the federal level."

During her availability Monday morning, Warren dodged a question on whether she supports the legalization of medical marijuana, saying only that she is against the wholesale legalization of the drug. She also reiterated her support of the DREAM Act, a proposed law that would enable the children of illegal immigrants, brought to the United States as minors, to obtain permanent residency if they serve in the military or complete a higher education degree program.

She also described a personal connection to immigration issues: her son-in-law is Indian-born.

"This is a part of our family," she said.

Although Republicans have used her employment as a Harvard professor to label her out-of-touch, Warren said her ascension in academia was "a chance, in my way, to live the American Dream."

"My father had a lot of jobs in his life. He ended up as a maintenance man. I got to be a college professor," she said. "For our family, it was opportunity all the way."

Warren's Democratic primary opponent, Marisa DeFranco, argued that the country's trade policies had directly impoverished millions of workers in other countries, which she said stoked illegal immigration to the United States.

"We had a rise in undocumented immigration because they could not eat and they could not work in their own country," she said. Citing new trade agreements signed by President Obama, DeFranco added, "We are going to see a wave again of undocumented immigration. We want immigrants to come to this country. We want them to come in an orderly and organized fashion." She also called for a pathway to legal status for immigrants in the country illegally already.