Law Commons^™

Let Fifty Flowers Bloom: Health Care Federalism After National Federation Of Independent Business V. Sebelius, Ann Marie Marciarille

Faculty Works

Conventional wisdom is that the American public does not want to think too long or too hard about Medicaid. Medicaid’s reputation has long been big, complicated, and widely misunderstood. The 2012 presidential election campaign has been much about Medicaid, but Medicaid is a subject we love to talk around. Yet, our next president will be compelled to think and speak explicitly and fluently about Medicaid because Medicaid is the budget-buster of government funded health insurance. Its budget busting propensities are most pronounced at the intersection of Medicaid and the government-funded health insurance program we do love to discuss: Medicare.

This …

Posner’S Pragmatism And The Turn Toward Fidelity, Edward Cantu

Faculty Works

It is no secret that formalist methodologies like originalism are not nearly as scientific as they pretend to be. Banking on this fact, pragmatism offers a prescriptive alternative: instead of expending intellectual energy attempting “fidelity” to antecedent “authority” (precedent, Framers’ intent, etc.) judges should embrace their inevitable roles as de facto policy makers, and focus on producing the best social results they can through the cases they decide. This article discusses the current state of legal pragmatism, with a focus on the archetypal species espoused by Judge Richard Posner, and asks whether it has proven itself capable of contributing anything …

You Can't Go Holmes Again, Lumen N. Mulligan

Faculty Works

Under the standard interpretation of 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the so called Holmes test, pleading a federal cause of action is sufficient for finding federal question jurisdiction. In January 2012, the Supreme Court, in Mims v. Arrow Financial Services, LLC, recharacterized this standard test for § 1331 jurisdiction as one that considers whether “federal law creates [both] a private right of action and furnishes the substantive rules of decision.” In this first piece to address the Mims Court’s significant change to the § 1331 canon, I applaud its rights-inclusive holding. I contend that this rights-inclusive view rests upon a firmer …