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7 Things You Need To Know About: Constitutional Law, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

These slides cover the 7 most important things you need to know about Constitutional Law - especially as it relates to business. Topics covered include the Supremacy Clause & preemption, Commercial Speech & the First Amendment, the Commerce Clause, the Bill of Rights and Constitutional History.

Teaching The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Case, Corey A. Ciocchetti

Corey A Ciocchetti

The ObamaCare case is one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in modern time. Even though it contains detailed constitutional law issues and is nearly 200 pages long, the case can be taught to undergraduates. These slides help tell the story and can be used to teach the case as well as constitutional law issues such as: (1) enumerated powers, (2) preemption, (3) federalism and more.

National Federation Of Independent Business V. Sebelius, Brannon P. Denning, Glenn H. Reynolds

Brannon P. Denning

Using our now-famous "Five Takes" format, Glenn Reynolds and I analyze NFIB v. Sebelius from five different perspectives: (1) Sebelius as Marbury; (2) Sebelius as Bakke; (3) Sebelius and the "legitimating" power of judicial review; (4) Sebelius as a Thayerian decision; and (5) Sebelius as part of some long game of Chief Justice Roberts'.

The Best Of Both Worlds: Applying Federal Commerce And State Police Powers To Reduce Prescription Drug Abuse, Stacey L. Sklaver

Stacey L. Sklaver

This article addresses the prescription drug abuse epidemic in the United States. In particular, it highlights that prescribers, as the gatekeepers of controlled substances, often lack the necessary education and training to properly prescribe such medications and to spot signs of abuse. This deficiency leads to patient overdoses and death, and resultant prescriber exposure to both civil and criminal liability.

Some states require controlled substance prescribers to obtain education on safe prescribing and abuse prevention methods, but many do not, yielding the need for a federal solution. The solution must address patient health, safety, and welfare under the purview of …

Constitutional Newspeak: Learning To Love The Affordable Care Act Decision, A. Christopher Bryant

Aaron Christopher Bryant

Constitutional Newspeak: Learning to Love the Affordable Care Act Decision In his classic dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell imagines a world in which language is regularly contorted to mean its opposite – as in the waging of war by the Ministry of Peace and infliction of torture by the Ministry of Love. A core claim of Orwell’s was that such abuse of language – which in his novel he labeled “Newspeak” -- would ultimately channel thought. Whatever the merits of this claim as a theory of linguistics, constitutional developments too recent to be called history demonstrate that as a practical …

Perverted Liberty: How The Supreme Court’S Limitation Of The Commerce Power Undermines Our Civil-Rights Laws And Makes Us Less Free, Chad Deveaux

Chad DeVeaux

I argue that the Supreme Court’s limitation of Congress’s commerce power in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius undermines the edifice of federal civil-rights laws. NFIB narrowly upheld the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate as a valid exercise of Congress’s tax power. But the Chief Justice and four dissenting Justices concluded that the mandate exceeds Congress’s commerce power. In their view, the Commerce Clause empowers the regulation of “existing commercial activity,” but does not permit Congress to “create commerce” by compelling one to engage in unwanted transactions. Because the individual mandate conscripts people to engage in involuntary transactions these …

The Ancient Mariner Of Constitutional Law: The Declining Role Of Navigability, Robert W. Adler

Robert W. Adler

For the first time in three decades, in its 2011-2012 Term the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case involving “navigability for title,” in which the issue of whether a river or other body of water is navigable determines whether a state has owned the beds and banks of the waterway since statehood. PPL Montana, LLC v. State, __ S. Ct. __, No. 10-218, 2012 WL 555205 (2012). The Court held that, in determining navigability for title, courts must focus on discrete segments of the river rather than the river as a whole, and that evidence of current navigability can only …

Is There An Efficient Antitrust Approach To Health Care?, Kathryn Ciano

Kathryn Ciano

As American states and the federal government wrestle to find a solution to health care reform, some regulators are looking towards antitrust laws in the international marketplace to govern domestic health care policy. Antitrust principles dictate that antitrust authorities must intervene only when pressures become so great as to interfere with the very operations of the market. Pharmaceutical and health care markets rely on free trade and competitive global cooperation, so there is no efficient antitrust approach to health care.

Constitutionality Of The Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act Under The Commerce Clause And The Necessary And Proper Clause, Wilson Huhn

Wilson R. Huhn

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a comprehensive federal statute that attempts to extend health insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans and to expand health insurance coverage by eliminating exclusions for preexisting conditions, increase medical loss ratios, abolish annual and lifetime limits, and other reforms. A necessary provision of this law (the individual mandate) requires most individuals to maintain health insurance coverage. The individual mandate has been challenged in a number of lawsuits on the ground that Congress lacks the power under the Constitution to require individuals to purchase health insurance. The power of Congress to …

Lawyers, Guns, And Money: Why The Tiahrt Amendment’S Ban On The Admissibility Of Atf Trace Data In State Court Actions Violates The Commerce Clause And The Tenth Amendment, Colin Miller

Colin Miller

The Tiahrt Amendment provides in relevant part that ATF trace data "shall be inadmissible in evidence, and shall not be used, relied on, or disclosed in any manner, nor shall testimony or other evidence be permitted based on the data, in a civil action in any State (including the District of Columbia) or Federal court..." This Amendment has hamstrung cities and localities which, in an effort to combat crime with civil litigation, have brought actions against the gun industry sounding in public nuisance, with trace data being crucial to the success of such actions. Because this Amendment regulates state as …

Broken Silence: Congressional Inaction, Judicial Reaction, And The Need For A Federally Mandated Physical Presence Standard For State Business Activity Taxes, Marjorie Gell

Marjorie Gell

This article concerns the need for Congress to resolve a serious and longstanding question of what jurisdictional standard a state should apply in order to impose a business activity tax on an out-of-state entity with no in-state physical presence. This is a question of enormous practical importance on which the states are squarely in conflict, and one that the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently refused to address. Currently there are two bills pending in Congress that would create a physical presence standard for all state business activity taxes. This article argues that (1) Congress needs act on these bills and …

Jon & Kate Plus The State: Why Congress Should Protect Children In Reality Programming, Dayna B. Royal

Dayna B. Royal

As "reality" programming continues to increase in popularity, so too does the number of children living out their young lives in front of the camera. Yet the current legal regime is inadequate to protect these children, whose parents have betrayed their best interests for fame and fortune. This article argues that Congress should enact a statute providing a regulatory sliding scale based on age that would largely prohibit children from participating in reality programming. A federal statute would bring clarity to this unsettled area of the law while ensuring that parents and programming executives cannot skirt individual state laws and …

Tempering The Commerce Power, Robert G. Natelson

Robert G. Natelson

The Supreme Court's modern interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause in the realm of interstate commerce is textually problematic, unfaithful to the Constitution's original meaning, and contains positive incentives for Congress to over-regulate. The Necessary and Proper Clause was intended to embody the common law doctrine of principals and incidents, and the Court should employ that doctrine as its interpretive benchmark. The common law doctrine contains less, although some, bias toward over-regulation, and it is flexible enough to adapt to changing social conditions. Adherence to the common law doctrine would markedly improve Commerce Power jurisprudence and reduce incentives for …

Gonzales V. Carhart: An Alternate Opinion, Brannon P. Denning

Brannon P. Denning

This article, written as an mock Supreme Court opinion, addresses an issue not addressed in the Supreme Court's opinion upholding the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban in Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124 (2007): Whether the ban was a valid exercise of Congress's Commerce Clause power. Applying the framework developed in Lopez and Morrison, the "Court" holds that it is not.

What Hath Raich Wrought? Five Takes, Brannon P. Denning, Glenn H. Reynolds

Brannon P. Denning

Written for a paper symposium on Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005), we describe the effects of the decision on what had seemed a renewed interest on the part of the Court to limit federal power.