Leid Stories - 10/07/13

How Obamacare Became Law: The Inside Story

Touted as President Obama’s single greatest accomplishment so far, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is also his most controversial and brazenly daring.

Now central to the government shutdown and looming debt-ceiling talks, it has ignited an all-out bipartisan war in Washington, with Republicans seeking to delay or defund it and Democrats determined to not let their landmark legislative victory come undone. Polls show a similar sharp divide among Americans. Few are neutral about Obamacare, and most accept it’s the law.

But how did Obamacare become law?

Josh Blackman, assistant professor of law at the South Texas College of Law and author of the recently released Unprecedented: The Constitutional Challenge to Obamacare, explains the executive, legislative and judicial life cycles of the law and why, even as it is being implemented, is constitutionally illegitimate to many.