The University of New Hampshire Law Review
Abstract
[Excerpt] “The United States Supreme Court sustained the Federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 based on Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr.’s majority opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. The decision was feted by President Obama, liberal politicians, activists, and citizens who feared the Supreme Court would use its judicial review powers to invalidate the signature achievement of the United States’ forty-fourth President. Unsurprisingly, the decision disappointed many conservatives, who expected the Court to exercise its judicial review power to invalidate what is arguably the most important and ambitious piece of federal social welfare legislation signed into law by any President since the Great Society Era. The Act is very unpopular with conservatives and right-wing media pundits because it was signed into law by a Democratic President in a country with increasingly pronounced partisan political cleavages and because it substantially reallocates resources in an industry that already consumes nearly one-fifth of the nation’s gross domestic product. Opponents of the Act seized on the “individual mandate,” which requires federal income tax-paying individuals to “ensure that the individual, and any dependent of the individual who is an applicable individual, is covered under minimum essential coverage . . . from private health insurance companies or pay what the Act describes as a “shared responsibility payment” or “penalty” directly to the Internal Revenue Service of the United States Treasury Department (“IRS”).”
Repository Citation
Akram Faizer, Chief Justice John “Marshall” Roberts—How the Chief Justice’s Majority Opinion Upholding the Federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 Evokes Chief Justice Marshall’s Decision in Marbury v. Madison, 11 U.N.H. L. REV. 1 (2013), available at http://scholars.unh.edu/unh_lr/vol11/iss1/3