The upcoming posts on health care and the courts

On December 13, I published "Major health care update," which discussed the decision that day by a U.S. District Judge in Virginia that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. I really talked about the political possibilities in light of that ruling and did not discuss what might happen in the courts. All I said on that topic was "This is a bit of a complicated matter, and I will either address it in a subsequent post or add that discussion to this post. Stay tuned..."

I started working on that "subsequent post" the next day, and I still am not quite finished. It has been too long since I have done any work on big time Constitutional issues, and I had forgotten just how complicated they can be--and this one is complicated.

I was going to publish one long post, but I am splitting that into two because 1) even I thought the length of just one post was excessive, and 2) while I finish up the last sections I figured I needed to go ahead and post what I have finished.

The first post explains some technical aspects of the judicial system and how it works and how that could affect the issue of the individual mandate. Here's the outline for the first post (sorry for the lack of a proper format on the outline--I can't figure out how to get it done properly on Blogger) :

I. Overview
II. Nature of the proceeding
III. The Judge’s ruling
IV. Appellate procedure and how it could affect this issue
V. Factors that could influence the Supreme Court's decision and my thoughts on how this will play out
A. Precedent
B. Narrowness
C. What the discussion so far means for this Virginia case and other PPACA cases
D. This case could be huge in terms of its effect.
E. The Virginia case is not going to get to the Supreme Court quickly.

The second post gets into the specific legal analysis.

UPDATE on 11-16-2011: When I first published this post, I included an outline for the "second post." However, as noted here, I have changed my approach and opinion since I posted that outline. Consequently, I have deleted that outline for now.

In no way will these posts be a comprehensive legal analysis. I have not even read any of the judicial decisions upholding the PPACA and the individual mandate. I simply read the ruling in the Virginia case and did my research and analysis based on what it contains.

I warn you ahead of time that despite my efforts to the contrary, these posts are going to be tedious reading, especially for non-lawyers. Anyone who wants to claim that this issue is simple and straightforward is, in my opinion, wrong. This matter concerns important issues at the core of our system of government under the Constitution related to the power of Congress and how the Constitution is interpreted and applied. Any decision by the Supreme Court on this matter could have enormous long term effects that go way beyond health care, and simplistic views are a mistake.