Today in class I covered the Iowa Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage opinion, Prop 8, and DOMA. This was one of the best classes I’ve had. I frequently reference this cool map (H/T David Cohen) that shows the progression of same-sex marriage in America over the last 20 years.
Jack has an interesting new perspective on the ACA case.
Flash forward to today. During his first term in office, President Barack Obama made health care his signature issue. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) made the most significant change to the American social contract since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. It realized the long-held dream of progressives of universal and affordable care for everyone in the United States.
By the time the ACA was passed, however, the nature of the party system had radically changed. The New Deal and the Great Society had support from liberal and moderate Republicans as well as Democrats. But by 2010, there were almost no moderate Republicans left. The ACA was passed solely with Democratic votes, and the two parties were at loggerheads over the nature of the social contract. The new radical Republican Party wanted to roll back important aspects of the social safety net—the Paul Ryan budget was a blueprint for this new dispensation. Conversely, Democrats wanted to complete their long struggle for basic rights of health care.
Not surprisingly, the Affordable Care Act was challenged in the courts almost as soon as it was passed. A change this big in the social contract needed ratification by the federal courts. That is what this litigation was always about, and everybody knew it.
…
Nevertheless, the attack on the individual mandate captured an important theme in the radical Republican vision of the social contract: the government should not force some people to buy insurance that would effectively subsidize health care for others. Moreover, because federal laws normally don’t use mandates directed at the general public, the challenge would just take out the mandate and leave virtually every other federal law in place.
This reflects on a few themes I develop in my book about the competing constitutional visions, and competing views of the social contract on display in NFIB v. Sebelius (I alluded to it in this post).
This isn’t good.
James Cheatham is a forgiving man, but after getting robbed of $60 on his birthday while trying to perform an act of kindness, he had little reservation about testifying in court.
Plus, the 45-year-old father of three from Queen Village had a subpoena to show up in court about the September incident, and he knew he couldn’t ignore it.
Which is why Cheatham was confused when, he says, a public defender called him twice before a scheduled February trial to tell him he didn’t have to worry about court – that there was nothing a judge would do if he didn’t show.
The public defender **** suggested, “Do not answer the district attorney’s phone calls,” Cheatham said Tuesday after a hearing in the case.
At the hearing, the Defender Association of Philadelphia removed **** from the case amid allegations of possible witness tampering.
“He was discouraging a victim of a crime, not to come to court,” Assistant District Attorney Caroline McGlynn said of *** after the brief hearing. “If a friend of a defendant did that, that would be intimidation.”
It seems that **** has been in practice for about three years.
Update: I have removed the lawyer’s name after learning that the allegations were falsified, and the lawyer was cleared of any misconduct.
In honor of Orin’s post, calling out Rob Reiner and Ken Mehlman as those who paid line waiters, I remembered this video I recorded on the morning of arguments in McDonald v. Chicago. You can see some of the paid line-waiters. I shamed them briefly as I did a video of the lineup. In another video (I don’t think I posted it), I tried to interview them, and ask them how much they paid but they would not talk to me.
Title Insurance is a type of insurance a purchaser of a property can buy to make sure that the title they are obtaining is free and clear of encumbrances. In Texas, the price of Title Insurance is fixed according to the purchase price. The cost is small enough that people don’t think much about it, but in class I discuss how over-priced it is, and that because the state sets minimum prices, it artificially inflates the rates.
The Times has an article about the high cost of title insurance!
Yet for years, a debate has raged as to whether premiums are too high, competition too constrained, and the insurers too closely intertwined with the mortgage and real estate professionals who send business their way. Some states have looked into the arrangements between title insurers and referral sources, including New York. In 2006, two title insurers that account for half the New York market — the Fidelity National Title Group and First American — agreed to 15 percent rate reductions to settle state allegations of illegal referral payments and rebates.
Indeed, in states that require attorneys for closings, the costs are even higher!
Founded in 2009, the company has grown slowly. Entitle’s sales account for only 0.1 percent of the total national premium, said Birny Birnbaum, the executive director of theCenter for Economic Justice, a consumer advocacy group. He attributed the slow growth to “the limited price competition in title insurance markets and the strength of the institutional arrangements between title insurers and those able to steer title business — lenders, developers, Realtors, builders.”
In Connecticut, where only lawyers can act as title insurance agents, “very few attorneys will close with Entitle, or sell very hard against it, because they’re not making the premium,” said Scott Penner, a lawyer in Milford. “Or they will increase their attorney fee, and that offsets the savings.”