Regular VC readers might be interested in knowing just how many briefs in the individual mandate case have been authored by your humble Conspirators. In this post, I try to summarize all of them. Not surprisingly, they all urge the Court to strike down the mandate.
Pride of place goes to Randy Barnett’s coauthorship of the merits brief for the National Federation of Independent Business and other private plaintiffs in the case. Randy is in many ways the architect of the legal strategy against the mandate.
My own amicus brief on behalf of the Washington Legal Foundation and a group of constitutional law scholars, argues that the mandate is not a “proper” exercise of Congress’ power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. I blogged about it in more detail here. Among our legal scholar amici are VC co-bloggers Jonathan Adler and Todd Zywicki.
David Kopel is the author of an excellent brief on behalf of the Independence Institute, Gary Lawson, Robert Natelson, and Guy Seidman, which focuses on a different aspect of the Necessary and Proper Clause. Lawson, Natelson, and Seidman are among the leading academic experts on the Clause.
John Elwood is the counsel of record on this amicus brief on behalf of the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization of some 2000 conservative and pro-free market state legislators. John’s brief focuses on the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and especially on the ways in which the mandate is inimical to the interests of the states.
Former VC-er Erik Jaffe is the counsel of record on this amicus brief for Docs4Patient Care, the Benjamin Rush Society, the Pacific Research Institute, the Galen Institute, and Angel Raich (of Gonzales v. Raich fame).
It’s possible that I have inadvertently missed some other VC-authored brief. If so, I’m sure my co-bloggers will set me straight.