For readers who may be interested, I will be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal from 8 to 8:30 AM tomorrow to talk about the upcoming Supreme Court oral argument on the Anti-Injunction Act, and whether or not it precludes the individual mandate lawsuit. The AIA issue is somewhat technical. But it does tie in to one of the key constitutional questions at stake in overall individual mandate litigation: whether the mandate is constitutional because it is actually a tax. Although the Fourth Circuit ruled otherwise, most lower courts have concluded that the AIA does not apply to the anti-mandate lawsuits because the mandate is not a tax as that term is defined in the Constitution.
I might have instead appeared on Washington Journal on Tuesday to talk about the main individual mandate oral argument. But unfortunately I will be at an international academic conference in Montreal that day – ironically a conference focused on the question of whether judicial review in federal systems promotes nationalization or decentralization.