Featuring the author Josh Blackman, Assistant Professor, South Texas College of Law; with comments by Randy Barnett, Carmack Waterhouse Professor in Legal Theory, Georgetown University Law Center; and Jeffrey Rosen, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center; moderated by Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies, Cato Institute.
In 2012 the U.S. Supreme Court became the center of the political
world. In a dramatic and unexpected 5-4 decision, Chief Justice
John Roberts voted to save the Affordable Care Act, commonly known
as Obamacare. Unprecedented tells the inside story of how
this constitutional challenge raced across all three branches of
government and narrowly avoided a collision between the Supreme
Court and President Obama. The book offers unrivaled inside access
to the key decisionmakers in Washington, based on interviews with
over 100 of the people who lived this journey — including the
academics who began the challenge, the attorneys who litigated the
case at all levels (and their allies at Cato and elsewhere), and
the Obama administration attorneys who defended the law. It reads
like a political thriller, providing the definitive account of how
the Supreme Court almost struck down the president’s
“unprecedented” law. It also explains what this decision means for
the future of the Constitution, the limits on federal power, and
the Supreme Court. Commenting on this book will be Randy Barnett,
who has been called the “intellectual godfather” of the Obamacare
constitutional challenge, and Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of
the National Constitution Center.
