The Jurist has posted my article on “Why the Individual Health Care Mandate is Unconstitutional.” The format allowed me to lay out the case against all three of the federal government’s rationales for the law more fully than in any previous popular press publication. Here’s an excerpt: Twenty-eight states and several private groups have now […]
Archive | Individual Mandate
Interview with Cato’s Ilya Shapiro on the legal challenges to the new federal health control law
By David Kopel on April 20, 2011 6:18 pm in Commerce Clause, Constitutional Law, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Taxing and Spending Clause
Ilya Shapiro is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. On Monday, I interviewed him for 39 minutes about Cato’s litigation program on constitutional issues, his traveling the country during the last year to debate the health control law, and the constitutional issues involved in […]
USA Today Refuses to Correct its Misrepresentation of My Statements About the Individual Mandate Litigation
I regret that I must report that USA Today refuses to correct the misrepresentation of my views about the individual mandate litigation that I pointed out in this post. I pointed out the mistake in e-mails to Joan Biskupic, the author of the article in question, and the editors of USA Today. Both refused to […]
Misquoted in USA Today
By Ilya Somin on April 14, 2011 8:33 pm in Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Media, Press
One of the dangers of commenting on hot-button legal issues is that reporters will sometimes misquote you. That happened to me in today’s front-page USA Today story on the individual mandate litigation by prominent legal reporter Joan Biskupic, which cited me as follows: George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin argued at a recent forum […]
Democratic AG Opposes Individual Mandate
The New York Times reports that Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit opposing the constitutionality of the individual mandate. This is significant because Koster is a Democrat (albeit one of recent vintage, having switched parties in 2007). In Missouri, a ballot referendum […]
Amherst College Debate on the Individual Mandate
This Tuesday at 7:30 PM, I will be returning to my alma mater, Amherst College, to debate the constitutionality of the Obama health care plan individual mandate. Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute will be joining me in arguing that the mandate is unconstitutional. Our opponents will be Akhil Amar of Yale Law School and […]
Justice Kennedy, the Individual Mandate, and the Broccoli Question
In The New Republic Purdue University political science professor Frank J. Colucci, author of Justice Kennedy’s Jurisprudence: The Full and Necessary Meaning of Liberty, ponders whether Justice Kennedy will vote to uphold the individual mandate. Colucci writes: The question of the individual mandate’s constitutionality is closely tied to two competing values that Kennedy believes in deeply: a […]
Political Ignorance and Obamacare Repeal
A recent Kaiser poll finds that only 52% of Americans realize that the Obama health care plan has not been repealed, with 22% believing that it has been, and 26% saying they don’t know. The 52% figure probably slightly overestimates the percentage of people who really know the right answer to this question, since some […]
Upcoming Debates on the Individual Mandate Litigation
This week, I will participating in not one but two panels on the individual mandate litigation. The first will be at the Brookings Institution on Wednesday, March 2, where I will be joined by David Rivkin (counsel for the states in the 26 state anti-mandate lawsuit), and also by former acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger […]
The DC District Court Decision Upholding the Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate
By Ilya Somin on February 23, 2011 12:40 am in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper
The recent District of Columbia federal trial court decision upholding the individual mandate breaks little new ground and has many of the same weaknesses as the two previous district court decisions that went the same way. Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that the mandate is a legitimate exercise of Congress’ power under the Commerce Clause because […]
Another District Court Decision on the Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate
This one is Mead v. Holder, from Judge Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, who concludes the mandate is constitutional. From the opinion: [T]he individual mandate provision is an appropriate means which is rationally related to the achievement of Congress’s larger goal of reforming the national health insurance system. […]
Predicting How the Mandate Might Fare at the Supreme Court: Explaining Chief Justice Roberts’ Vote — and Opinion Assignment — in United States v. Comstock
Legal debates over the constitutionality of the individtal mandate generally focus on three different questions: (1) As a matter of constitutional theory, how should a court rule based on a normative theory of interpretation; (2) As a matter of existing doctrine, how does the mandate fit (or not fit) into existing law, and (3) As […]
Tribe’s Take on the Individual Mandate
Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe, author of the once-great constitutional law treatise, rises to defend the constitutionality of the individual mandate in today’s NYT. Or rather I should say he explains in the NYT why his defense is unnecessary, because there is no reason to believe that a majority of the Supreme Court would embrace […]
Will Democratic Lawmakers Abandon the Individual Mandate?
Politico reports that some Democratic Senators up for reelection in 2012 are looking at alternatives to the individual mandate. Does this help or hurt the court challenges?
Waldman versus Waldman
By David Bernstein on February 7, 2011 10:38 pm in Constitutional Law, Health Care, Individual Mandate
Here are opposing views on the whether the Supreme Court should interpret the Constitution to limit government, or should defer to the elected branches. Both are from Michael Waldman of NYU’s Brennan Center. Waldman 1: Ultimately, America has grown stronger when active citizens, organized pressure groups, and accountable politicians wrestle with large policy challenges. The […]