Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
- Publication
- Publication Type
- File Type
Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Law
Rediscovering A Principled Commerce Power , Douglas W. Kmiec
Rediscovering A Principled Commerce Power , Douglas W. Kmiec
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Substance And Method In The Year 2000, Akhil Reed Amar
Substance And Method In The Year 2000, Akhil Reed Amar
Pepperdine Law Review
No abstract provided.
Foreword: Academic Influence On The Court, Neal K. Katyal
Foreword: Academic Influence On The Court, Neal K. Katyal
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The months leading up to the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were characterized by a prodigious amount of media coverage that purported to analyze how the legal challenge to Obamacare went mainstream. The nation’s major newspapers each had a prominent story describing how conservative academics, led by Professor Randy Barnett, had a long-term strategy to make the case appear credible. In the first weeks after the ACA’s passage, the storyline went, the lawsuit’s prospects of success were thought to be virtually nil. Professor (and former Solicitor General) Charles Fried stated that he would “eat a …
Justice Roberts’ America, Robin West
Justice Roberts’ America, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Less than a week after the Roberts Court issued its decision in National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius, Jeffrey Toobin, writing in The New Yorker, compared the first part of Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion, in which he found that the Commerce Clause did not authorize Congress to enact the "individual mandate" section of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires all individuals to buy health insurance, with an Ayn Rand screed, noting that the pivotal sections of the argument were long on libertarian rhetoric but short on citations of authority. Roberts held (although "held" might be …
Common Law Constitutionalism, The Constitutional Common Law, And The Validity Of The Individual Mandate, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Common Law Constitutionalism, The Constitutional Common Law, And The Validity Of The Individual Mandate, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
The paper proceeds as follows. Part I describes the constitutional common law and its interactions with common-law constitutionalism. Part II uses the fight over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its so-called "individual mandate" as a case study to flesh out the core differences between common-law constitutionalism and constitutional common law. Part III argues that a viable justification for a living constitution needs to embrace and defend the courts' essentially political nature, confronting head-on the (skyscraper) originalists' sense that courts should never do politics.
Safeguarding The Safeguards: The Aca Litigation And The Extension Of Structural Protection To Non-Fundamental Liberties, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Safeguarding The Safeguards: The Aca Litigation And The Extension Of Structural Protection To Non-Fundamental Liberties, Abigail R. Moncrieff
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
As the lawsuits challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) have evolved, one feature of the litigation has proven especially rankling to the legal academy: the courts' incorporation of substantive libertarian concerns into their structural federalism analyses. The breadth and depth of scholarly criticism is surprising, especially given that judges frequently choose indirect methods, including the structural and processbased methods at issue in the ACA litigation, for protecting substantive constitutional values. Indeed, indirect protection of constitutional liberties is a well-known and well-theorized strategy, which one scholar recently termed "semisubstantive review" and another theorized as "judicial manipulation of legislative …
Individual Mandate Is Constitutional, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns
Individual Mandate Is Constitutional, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns
Maxwell L. Stearns
Supreme Court should find that key aspect of Obama's signature law is a legitimate exercise of Commerce Clause power.
Individual Mandate Is Constitutional, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns
Individual Mandate Is Constitutional, Leslie Henry, Maxwell Stearns
Leslie Meltzer Henry
Supreme Court should find that key aspect of Obama's signature law is a legitimate exercise of Commerce Clause power.
Discarding The North Dakota Dictum: An Argument For Strict Scrutiny Of The Three-Tier Distribution System, Amy Murphy
Discarding The North Dakota Dictum: An Argument For Strict Scrutiny Of The Three-Tier Distribution System, Amy Murphy
Michigan Law Review
In Granholm v. Heald, the Supreme Court held that states must treat instate and out-of-state alcoholic beverages equally under the dormant Commerce Clause and established a heightened standard of review for state alcohol laws. Yet in dictum the Court acknowledged that the three-tier distribution system-a regime that imposes a physical presence requirement on alcoholic beverage wholesalers and retailers-was "unquestionably legitimate." Though the system's physical presence requirement should trigger strict scrutiny, lower courts have placed special emphasis on Granholm's dictum, refusing to subject the three-tier distribution system to Granholm's heightened standard of review. This Note argues that the dictum should be …
Constitutional Newspeak: Learning To Love The Affordable Care Act Decision, A. Christopher Bryant
Constitutional Newspeak: Learning To Love The Affordable Care Act Decision, A. Christopher Bryant
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
In his classic dystopian novel, 1984, George Orwell imagines a world in which language is regularly contorted to mean its opposite - as in the waging of war by the Ministry of Peace and infliction of torture by the Ministry of Love. A core claim of Orwell's was that such abuse of language - which in his novel he labeled "Newspeak"-would ultimately channel thought. Whatever the merits of this claim as a theory of linguistics, constitutional developments too recent to be called history demonstrate that as a practical matter Orwell was on to something. The Court's June 28 decision both …
Chopping Down The Rainforest: Finding A Solution To The "Amazon Problem", Eric Andrew Felleman
Chopping Down The Rainforest: Finding A Solution To The "Amazon Problem", Eric Andrew Felleman
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat
Current economic conditions in the United States have led to a dramatic decrease in state tax revenue. Without these funds, states will be unable to support important public services, and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public and private sectors are at risk of being cut, as states work to close $103 billion in budget gaps. Accomplishing that will involve overcoming many hurdles, such as the unpopularity of raising taxes during times of economic trouble, but one largely untapped source could provide a significant amount of income to states. States currently lose around $23 billion annually in uncollected use …
Response: There Is No New General Common Law Of Severability, Kevin C. Walsh
Response: There Is No New General Common Law Of Severability, Kevin C. Walsh
Law Faculty Publications
In this solicited response to The New General Common Law of Severability, I first offer an interpretation of Ayotte and subsequent Supreme Court decisions as continuous with existing doctrine instead of a departure from it. I then suggest that much of Scoville’s evidence for a federalization of severability doctrine is better viewed as evidence of doctrinal looseness rather than of doctrinal change. I conclude by returning to the lessons of severability’s doctrinal history, suggesting that the prehistory of severability doctrine may supply a better guide for how courts should deal with problems of partial unconstitutionality in the future.
The Constitutional Foundation For Federal Medical Liability Reform, Mark A. Behrens, Cary Silverman
The Constitutional Foundation For Federal Medical Liability Reform, Mark A. Behrens, Cary Silverman
Journal of Health Care Law and Policy
No abstract provided.
Obligatory Health, Noa Ben-Asher
Obligatory Health, Noa Ben-Asher
Faculty Publications
The Supreme Court will soon rule on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed in March 2010. Courts thus far are divided on the question whether Congress had authority under the Commerce Clause to impose the Act's "Individual Mandate" to purchase health insurance. At this moment, the public and legal debate can benefit from a clearer understanding of the underlying rights claims. This Article offers two principal contributions. First, the Article argues that, while the constitutional question technically turns on the interpretation of congressional power under the Commerce Clause, underlying these debates is a tension between …
Constitutional Forbearance, A. Christopher Bryant
Constitutional Forbearance, A. Christopher Bryant
Faculty Articles and Other Publications
This essay begins by developing the concept of constitutional forbearance and exploring the role it plays in the craft of good judging. This first Part also illustrates what is meant by constitutional forbearance by recovering a forgotten but illustrative example from a century ago. Part II then argues that the need for forbearance has at present become unusually acute. Finally, in Part III this essay identifies some of the qualities of the Obama care cases that make them such singular opportunities for the exercise of this much needed judicial virtue and answers some anticipated objections to thinking about the cases …
The Individual Mandate And The Taxing Power, Erik M. Jensen
The Individual Mandate And The Taxing Power, Erik M. Jensen
Faculty Publications
This article, prepared for a symposium at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University, considers whether the Taxing Clause provides an alternative constitutional basis, as some have recently argued, for the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 21 - the requirement, going into effect in 214, that most individuals acquire satisfactory health insurance or pay a penalty. The article concludes that the Taxing Clause arguments are misguided. At best, the Clause can provide authority for the penalty, not for the mandate as a whole. Furthermore, the article questions whether the penalty will …
How The Gun-Free School Zones Act Saved The Individual Mandate, Richard A. Primus
How The Gun-Free School Zones Act Saved The Individual Mandate, Richard A. Primus
Articles
For all the drama surrounding the Commerce Clause challenge to the in-dividual mandate provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”), the doctrinal question presented is simple. Under existing doctrine, the provision is as valid as can be. To be sure, the Supreme Court could alter existing doctrine, and many interesting things could be written about the dynamics that sometimes prompt judges to strike out in new directions under the pressures of cases like this one. But it is not my intention to pursue that possibility here. My own suspicion, for what it is worth, is that the …
The Ppaca In Wonderland, Gary S. Lawson, David Kopel
The Ppaca In Wonderland, Gary S. Lawson, David Kopel
Faculty Scholarship
The question whether the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) is “unconstitutional” is thorny, not simply because it presents intriguing issues of interpretation but also because it starkly illustrates the ambiguity that often accompanies the word “unconstitutional.” The term can be, and often is, used to mean a wide range of things, from inconsistency with the Constitution’s text to inconsistency with a set of policy preferences. In this article, we briefly explore the range of meanings that attach to the term “unconstitutional,” as well as the problem of determining the “constitutionality” of a lengthy statute when only some portions …