Unprecedented; The Constitutional Challenge To Obamacare
New York: PublicAffairs, 2013. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. xxviii, 322, [4] pages. Foreword by Randy E. Barnett. Author's Note. Index. Inscribed by the author on the fep. Inscription reads 9-13-13 To Rob, A former GMUSL Classmate. Keep the Constitution close to your heart. JB Washington, DC. Joshua Michael Blackman is an American lawyer who is employed as an associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law where he focuses on constitutional law and the intersection of law and technology. He has authored three books and more than sixty law review articles. After attending Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, and the Antonin Scalia School of Law (then George Mason University Law School) in Arlington, Virginia, Blackman worked as a law clerk for the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania under Judge Kim R. Gibson from 2009 to 2011. He then worked for the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit under Judge Danny Julian Boggs from 2011 to 2012. He has appeared as a speaker for the Federalist Society, and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. In 2012, the United States Supreme Court became the center of the political world. In a dramatic and unexpected 5 4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts voted on narrow grounds to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Unprecedented tells the inside story of how the challenge to Obamacare raced across all three branches of government, and narrowly avoided a constitutional collision between the Supreme Court and President Obama. On November 13, 2009, a group of Federalist Society lawyers met in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., to devise a legal challenge to the constitutionality of President Obama's legacy, his healthcare reform. It seemed a very long shot, and was dismissed peremptorily by the White House, much of Congress, most legal scholars, and all of the media. Two years later the fight to overturn the Affordable Care Act became a political and legal firestorm. When, finally, the Supreme Court announced its ruling, the judgment was so surprising that two cable news channels misreported it and announced that the Act had been declared unconstitutional. Unprecedented offers unrivaled inside access to how key decisions were made in Washington, based on interviews with over one hundred of the people who lived this journey including the academics who began the challenge, the attorneys who litigated the case at all levels, and Obama administration attorneys who successfully defended the law. It reads like a political thriller, provides the definitive account of how the Supreme Court almost struck down President Obama's unprecedented law, and explains what this decision means for the future of the Constitution, the limits on federal power, and the Supreme Court. Derived from a Kirkus review: A young legal scholar delivers an impressive blow-by-blow account of the court battle to defeat the Affordable Care Act.
Unprecedented was the legislative process that enacted it without a single Republican vote, the widespread and swift mobilization of citizens' groups to oppose it, and the legal challenge to overturn it. Blackman provides a helpful legislative history underlying Obamacare's enactment, charting the major parties' shameless shifting of positions on the individual mandate, and he explores the extralegal machinations surrounding the litigation. He focuses on the court duel, the uncommon 26-state coalition opposing the law, the tortuous progress of the health care cases through the lower courts, and the noteworthy three days and over six hours the Supreme Court devoted to oral argument in NFIB v. Sebelius. Employing a theory roundly ridiculed before any litigation began, the plaintiffs argued that neither the Commerce nor the Necessary and Proper Clause permitted the government to require individuals to purchase health care insurance. Remarkably, a majority of the court agreed, but in an opinion worthy of the wily John Marshall, the chief justice found the law constitutional under the government's power to tax. As the implications of John Roberts' controversial opinion play out in the court's future jurisprudence and as the realities of Obamacare's provisions unfold, historians will look to this wild and, yes, unprecedented moment, when legal experts seriously wrangled over whether the federal government could require a citizen to buy broccoli. With his talent for translating arcane legal-speak, Blackman more than capably captures this dramatic constitutional showdown. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, Supreme Court, NFIB v. Sebelius, Randy Barnett, Samuel Alito, Commerce Clause, Constitutional Law, Orrin Hatch, Elena Kagan, Neal Katyal, Anthony Kennedy, Individual Mandate, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Donald Verril
ISBN: 9781610393287
[Book #84016]
Price: $125.00