Unprecedented

July 8, 2013
An unbiased analysis of conservatives’ efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) would be a welcome addition to the literature on the legislation. Unfortunately, with Blackman’s account, warning signs are evident early on—the foreword was written by Randy E. Barnett, a Georgetown law professor who dedicated himself “to the constitutional challenge to Obamacare” for almost three years, and whom Blackman dubs the “intellectual godfather” of the cause. Barnett notes that Blackman spoke to “nearly everyone involved,” but the author himself acknowledges that he “made no efforts to contact any of the justices or their clerks”—explaining, “This book is about how people outside the Court reacted to the legal drama inside the Court.” Though the 2012 decision allowed the act to stand, Blackman argues that the logic behind Chief Justice Roberts’s deciding vote—which hinged on a rewrite of the individual mandate statute—set the precedent for future conservative arguments in favor of limiting federal powers. Blackman does a stellar job of calling out both parties for their flip-flopping with respect to the individual mandate, but his viewpoint is limited. Agent: Don Fehr, Trident Media Group.

August 15, 2013
A young legal scholar delivers an impressive blow-by-blow account of the court battle to defeat the Affordable Care Act. "Unprecedented," writes Blackman (South Texas College of Law) about the president's health care initiative, "a monumental and transformational law" critics derisively branded "Obamacare," a label the president later happily embraced. Unprecedented, too, 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, though, 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 in our daily lives, 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 strong connections among the conservative and libertarian lawyers who mounted the constitutional challenge and his talent for translating arcane legal-speak, Blackman more than capably captures this dramatic constitutional showdown.

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August 1, 2013
The pitched legal battle to end the national health-care program known as Obamacare ended in a surprising decision supported by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, a decision that promises continued strife on the issue of health care as well as constitutional issues. Blackman, law professor, blogger, and representative of a coalition of independent business interests opposed to the program, spent more than two years following the legislative process that produced Obamacare and the legal challenges to the program. Blackman argues that the process was unprecedented in many ways, including the nature of the legislation to compel citizens to buy insurance, the legal arguments for and against, and the political pressure brought to bear on the Left and the Right. He details the political machinations behind the Supreme Court decision in favor of the health-care program, particularly pressure on Roberts. Blackman also explores the significance of the decision as a galvanizing issue for conservatives and future implications for challenges to government power.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)