No Small Feat: Who Won the Health Care Case (and Why Did So Many Law Professors Miss the Boat)?

In this Essay, prepared as the basis for the 2013 Dunwody Distinguished Lecture in Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, I describe five aspects of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius that are sometimes overlooked or misunderstood: (1) the Court held that imposing economic mandates on the people was unconstitutional under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses; (2) Chief Justice John Roberts’s reasoning was the holding in the case, whether viewed from a formalist or a realist perspective; (3) the Court did not uphold the constitutionality of the individual insurance mandate under the tax power; (4) the newfound power to tax inactivity is far less dangerous than the commerce power advocated for by the Government and most law professors; and (5) the doctrine established by NFIB matters (to the extent that constitutional law doctrine ever matters). Finally, I turn my attention to the question of why so many law professors got this case so wrong. After providing a lengthy compendium of law professors’ published opinions about the case, I suggest that most missed the boat because they have failed to appreciate the constitutional gestalt that informed the Rehnquist Court’s New Federalism and carried over to a majority of the Roberts Court.