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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Individual Mandate Tax Penalty, Jeffrey H. Kahn
The Individual Mandate Tax Penalty, Jeffrey H. Kahn
Scholarly Publications
In 2010, President Obama signed legislation that significantly altered the healthcare and health insurance markets in the United States. An integral part of that reform is the individual mandate, a provision that requires individuals to purchase and maintain healthcare insurance. Failure to maintain such coverage subjects an individual to a tax penalty. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of that provision under Congress’s taxing power.
Despite the Supreme Court upholding the individual mandate, fundamental questions remain. This Article addresses the question of whether the use of a tax penalty to encourage taxpayers to do something that the government desires is …
The Spending Power And Environmental Law After Sebelius, Erin Ryan
The Spending Power And Environmental Law After Sebelius, Erin Ryan
Scholarly Publications
This article analyzes the Supreme Court’s new spending power doctrine and its impact on state-federal bargaining in programs of cooperative federalism, using the laboratory of environmental law. (It expands on the legal analysis in an Issue Brief originally published by the American Constitution Society on Oct. 1, 2013.) After the Supreme Court ruled in the highly charged Affordable Care Act case of 2012, National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius, the political arena erupted in debate over the implications for the health reform initiative and, more generally, the reach of federal law. Analysts fixated on the decision’s dueling Commerce Clause …