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The National Individual Health Insurance Mandate: Ethics And The Constitution, Lawrence O. Gostin
The National Individual Health Insurance Mandate: Ethics And The Constitution, Lawrence O. Gostin
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Within weeks, after signing the nation’s first comprehensive health insurance reform, twenty states filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Bill’s most politically charged feature—an individual purchase mandate. If anything, the tax penalty is too low compared with the cost of insurance, so it may not sufficiently incentivize healthy individuals. But it remains deeply controversial because it compels individuals to purchase coverage they choose not to have, raising the question whether Congress can lawfully and ethically require individuals to contract with, and transfer money to, a private party. To be sure, the individual mandate lacks a clear American precedent. (It …
Commandeering The People: Why The Individual Health Insurance Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Randy E. Barnett
Commandeering The People: Why The Individual Health Insurance Mandate Is Unconstitutional, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” includes what is called an “individual responsibility requirement” or mandate that all persons buy health insurance from a private company and a separate “penalty” enforcing this requirement. In this paper, I do not critique the individual mandate on originalist grounds. Instead, I explain why the individual mandate is unconstitutional under the existing doctrine by which the Supreme Court construes the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses and the tax power. There are three principal claims.
First (Part II), since the New Deal, the Supreme Court has developed a doctrine allowing the regulation of …
Methodological Challenges In Comparative Constitutional Law, Vicki C. Jackson
Methodological Challenges In Comparative Constitutional Law, Vicki C. Jackson
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
My talk today, Methodological Challenges in Comparative Constitutional Law, has two parts. The first part focuses on the relationship between the purposes of comparison and the methodological challenges of comparison. The second part asks whether there are particular methodological challenges in comparative constitutional law as compared with other comparative legal studies.
The Shadow Of State Secrets, Laura K. Donohue
The Shadow Of State Secrets, Laura K. Donohue
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The shadow of state secrets casts itself longer than previously acknowledged. Between 2001 and 2009 the government asserted state secrets in more than 100 cases, while in scores more litigants appealed to the doctrine in anticipation of government intervention. Contractor cases ranged from breach of contract, patent disputes, and trade secrets, to fraud and employment termination. Wrongful death, personal injury, and negligence suits kept pace, extending beyond product liability to include infrastructure and services, as well as conduct of war. In excess of fifty telecommunications suits linked to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program emerged 2006-2009, with the government acting, variously, …