“LECTURE CANCELLED - Obamacare: Law, Politics, and Culture”

Jason Mazzone
Professor and Lynn H. Murray Faculty Scholar in Law, University of Illinois, U.S.


Part of the Law Seminar Series

In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a fractured decision upholding as constitutional central provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act, the healthcare reform statute that is the central achievement of President Barack Obama’s first term in office. No Supreme Court case in forty years generated such intense public interest and divisiveness. The widely controversial requirement in the health care law that almost all Americans purchase or otherwise obtain a minimum level of health insurance coverage gave birth to the Tea Party, a conservative political movement that has played an influential role in national elections and has forced responses and accommodations by both major American political parties. The experience with the Affordable Care Act, from enactment to adjudication before the Supreme Court, is deeply revealing of the current state of law, politics, and culture in the United States in 2012.

Why did healthcare, an issue in most countries that would be the province of technocrats and administrative regulations, so quickly become a constitutional question in the United States? Why did the constitutional challenge to the healthcare law, though dismissed (indeed ridiculed) by almost all American constitutional scholars, rapidly gain traction in the courts and among the general public? What lessons can be drawn from the case about the current Supreme Court’s relationship to the political branches and its attentiveness to public opinion? What will be the lingering effects of the healthcare law and decision after the national elections in November? Jason Mazzone will discuss the issues that emerge from this blockbuster episode in the American constitutional experience.

JASON MAZZONE

Jason Mazzone is Professor and the Lynn H. Murray Faculty Scholar in Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining the University of Illinois he was the Gerald Baylin Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School. Professor Mazzone’s research and teaching focus on issues of constitutional law and history, comparative constitutional law, and intellectual property law. Professor Mazzone received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Stanford University, and a master’s and doctorate from Yale University. His scholarship has been cited by many courts, including by the Supreme Court of the United States. He has written about legal issues for The New York Times and other national newspapers, and he is a regular media commentator. He is a member of the American Law Institute. He blogs at Balkinization.


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