Law Commons^™

Foreword, Neil S. Siegel

Law and Contemporary Problems

The articles published in this volume of Law and Contemporary Problems address the constitutionality of the minimum coverage provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), either directly or indirectly. They were originally presented at a conference at Duke Law School on September 16, 2011. Entitled “The Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: Ideas from the Academy,” the conference was inspired by the belief that legal academics who specialize in U.S. constitutional law, health law and policy, or statutory interpretation are making distinctive contributions to the national debate over the constitutionality of the ACA. These legal academics are …

Bootstrapping, Stuart M. Benjamin

Law and Contemporary Problems

Virtually every action depends on some conditions precedent. Law is no exception. The common law and precedent involve reliance on earlier developments, as do more particularized phenomena like slippery slopes and path dependence. In some situations, an actor undertakes permissible action Y and thereby renders its action Z legally permissible, a phenomenon I refer to as bootstrapping. Some commentators have raised concerns about the consequences of allowing bootstrapping, notably in the context of the individual mandate in the 2010 health care act. In this article I consider whether we, as citizens, should find bootstrapping, or a particular category of bootstrapping, …

The Uneasy Case For The Affordable Care Act, Stephen E. Sachs

Law and Contemporary Problems

The constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is sometimes said to be an "easy" question, with the Act's opponents relying more on fringe political ideology than mainstream legal arguments. This essay disagrees. While the mandate may win in the end, it won't be easy, and the arguments against it sound in law rather than politics.

Written to accompany and respond to Erwin Chemerinsky's essay in the same symposium, this essay argues that each substantive defense of the mandate is subject to doubt. While Congress could have avoided the issue by using its taxing power, it chose not to do so. …