Law Commons^™

The Benefits Of Opt-In Federalism, Brendan Maher

Brendan Maher

The Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) is a historic and controversial statute that mandates people make insurance bargains. Unacknowledged is an innovative mechanism ACA uses to select the law that governs those bargains: opt-in federalism.

Opt-in federalism -- in which individuals choose between federal and state rules -- is a promising theoretical means to make and choose law. This Article explains why, and concludes that the appeal of opt-in federalism is independent of ACA. Whatever the statute’s constitutional fate, future policymakers should consider opt-in federalist approaches to answer fundamental but exceedingly difficult questions of health and retirement law.

The Legislative Process In The State Of Florida, Katie Brown

Kathleen (Katie) Brown

Historically, Florida failed to retain legislative history resources because the Governor was disproportionately involved in the law-making process, the view materials were not very important, and the lack of materials limited their early use for exploration of legislative intent. Once resources became more readily available, Florida court opinions began to explore when legislative history should be introduced as evidence of intent, what materials would be admissible, and how much weight the legislative resources should be afforded. Today, although Florida still has some issues with broad accessibility of historical legislative history material, the Florida courts have acknowledged there are times when …