Lifted from an e-mail by Beverly Mann in response to an inquiry of mine on a Washington Post article: Hi Dan. The key paragraphs in a Washington Post article earlier this week, called Supreme Court faces pressure to reconsider Citizens United ruling say: The Supreme Court has already blocked the Montana decision, and the justices […]

The Supreme Court has chosen to be involved in many of the major issues during this election campaign.  From the NYT: … the court will hear arguments in a challenge to Arizona’s tough immigration law, and it will soon confront cases concerning affirmative action in higher education and a request to reconsider the Citizens United campaign finance decision. Cases […]

The answer to the title’s question—Can your state mandate that you buy broccoli or join a gym?—depends upon which of the two possible grounds the 5-4 Supreme Court majority overturns the ACA’s individual-mandate provision.  And which grounds the majority selects also will determine whether under the Court’s new “liberty” jurisprudence, Social Security and Medicare also […]

I’ve written repeatedly now on AB that the challenge to the constitutionality of the ACA’s minimum-coverage provision (a.k.a., the individual-mandate provision) is not really a Commerce Clause challenge but instead a challenge under the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause, under what is known as the “substantive due process” constitutional law doctrine.  The Fifth Amendment’s due […]

To the general public, all that matters are the headlines, reflecting the bottom line.  The universal consensus among reporters who attended the 90-minute Supreme Court argument yesterday on whether an 1867 law called the Anti-Injunction Act bars the Court from considering challenges to the constitutionality of ACA’s individual-mandate provision was that the justices will decide […]

As AB readers know, I’ve written quite a number of in-depth posts on the ACA litigation—on the individual-mandate provision and on other issues as well.  (The number, by my count, is at least 11,** including the one I posted yesterday, titled “Showtime At The Supreme Court”).  And for your reading enjoyment, and in honor the […]

Dan emailed me several days ago asking whether I thought I should write a preshow (my word, not his) post about next week’s marathon Supreme Court oral arguments on the constitutionality of Obamacare, a.k.a., the Affordable Care Act.  Six hours of argument, two each day, Monday through Wednesday, in which the Court will hear argument, first, […]

Last Wednesday, the day after oral argument at the Supreme Court in a case called Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, both Linda and I posted about the case.  Linda’s post I believe was written shortly before the argument although posted afterward.  Mine was written after the argument and discussed news reports about what occurred.  The […]

The post garnered only one comment, from kharris, who complained that the post was incomprehensible and asked whether it was intended as facetious, and whether I could give a Cliff’s Notes version of it.  I can and did.  I wrote: [The] post was not intended as facetious, although I’m sure it will be taken that […]

In her post earlier today on Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the sort-of-Citizens–United-like case argued yesterday in the Supreme Court, Linda discusses the issue that was supposed to be the one that the Court would decide, because, well, that was the issue that the lower appellate court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, decided.  The […]