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Full-Text Articles in Law
Chief Justice Roberts' Individual Mandate: The Lawless Medicine Of Nfib V. Sebelius, Gregory Magarian
Chief Justice Roberts' Individual Mandate: The Lawless Medicine Of Nfib V. Sebelius, Gregory Magarian
Gregory P. Magarian
After the U.S. Supreme Court in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius held nearly all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act constitutional, praise rained down on Chief Justice John Roberts. The Chief Justice’s lead opinion broke with his usual conservative allies on the Court by upholding the Act’s individual mandate under the Taxing Clause. Numerous academic and popular commentators have lauded the Chief Justice for his political courage and institutional pragmatism. In this essay, Professor Magarian challenges the heroic narrative surrounding the Chief Justice’s opinion. The essay contends that the opinion is, in two distinct senses, fundamentally …
Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal Irs Rule To Expand Tax Credits Under The Ppaca, Jonathan H. Adler, Michael F. Cannon
Taxation Without Representation: The Illegal Irs Rule To Expand Tax Credits Under The Ppaca, Jonathan H. Adler, Michael F. Cannon
Faculty Publications
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) provides tax credits and subsidies for the purchase of qualifying health insurance plans on state-run insurance exchanges. Contrary to expectations, many states are refusing or otherwise failing to create such exchanges. An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rule purports to extend these tax credits and subsidies to the purchase of health insurance in federal exchanges created in states without exchanges of their own. This rule lacks statutory authority. The text, structure, and history of the Act show that tax credits and subsidies are not available in federally run exchanges. The IRS rule is …
The Great And Mighty Tax Law: How The Roberts Court Has Reduced Constitutional Scrutiny Of Taxes And Tax Expenditures, Linda Sugin
The Great And Mighty Tax Law: How The Roberts Court Has Reduced Constitutional Scrutiny Of Taxes And Tax Expenditures, Linda Sugin
Faculty Scholarship
This article compares National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius – the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the individual mandate in Obamacare as a tax, with Arizona Christian Schools v. Winn – the Supreme Court’s decision denying standing to taxpayers with an Establishment Clause challenge to a state tax credit. It argues that these cases aggravate a growing tension between the economic and legal analyses of taxation by reducing the legal significance of economic analysis in constitutional cases. It suggests that Arizona Christian Schools was a truly radical decision because it conceptualized tax expenditures as private action immune from constitutional attack, …