The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies is honored to host Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy to deliver our fifth annual Joseph Story Distinguished Lecture on October 24, 2012. The lecture, entitled “The Constitution and Its Promise,” is the penultimate event in Heritage’s 2012 Preserve the …
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has a General Counsel and legal staff to ensure that the agency’s actions are lawful. Did they take the day off last Thursday? We have to question whether the department lawyers were consulted at all about the “Information Memorandum” issued by HHS …
If the individual mandate is the blockbuster issue before the Court, Medicaid and severability may be sleeper hits that ultimately have tremendous impact. If the Court strikes down the mandate, then what is to be done with the Russian novel-length ObamaCare? Should the Court just tear out the few pages …
The Supreme Court’s term has barely begun, and yet speculation already abounds regarding when the Court will hear and how it will decide politically controversial cases such as Obamacare, racial preferences, immigration, and same-sex marriage. Court watchers offer their predictions on the outcomes of the cases, but many if not …
Today the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected two challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)—better known as ObamaCare—on procedural grounds. Because the court found procedural problems in both cases, it did not reach the constitutional question of whether the individual mandate is constitutional. Importantly, the procedural …
This afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled that the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), more commonly known as Obamacare, is unconstitutional. The carefully worded and thorough (over 300 page) set of opinions may be a …
Yesterday, the Supreme Court denied Virginia’s motion to bypass the appellate court and go directly to the Supreme Court in its challenge to the Obamacare litigation. The Court’s decision not to hear the case, delivered in an order without comment, was not surprising. While the procedure exists for the Court …
Today’s decision by Judge Vinson is another stinging defeat for the administration in its defense of Obamacare. Defenders of the health care bill had tried to paint any legal challenge as “frivolous.” When then-Speaker Pelosi was asked by a reporter “where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to …
