Contributor

Stephen B. Presser

Professor of Business Law, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Biography provided by participant

Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the Kellogg School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.

Recent Responses

January 9, 2012 11:41 AM

Friends of Federalism

Predicting the outcome of a Supreme Court decision is hazardous, but it is easy to suggest what's at stake in the decision the Supreme Court will have to render on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

As most of the judges who have considered the Act have made clear, if Congress can compel individuals to participate in interstate commerce by requiring that health insurance be purchased from private parties by all Americans, there is very little, if anything that Congress may not do. The proponents of the Constitutionality of the PPACA's individual mandate have not been able to explain how this extraordinary assertion of federal power over 1/6 of the economy is consistent with the Tenth Amendment's clear statement that our federal government is supposed to be one of limited and enumerated powers.

Either the primary police power -- the power, in short, to govern in the name of the people -- remains where the framers put it (with the state and local governments), or it does not. The majority of Supreme Court decisions on the reach of Congress's