The right to buy health insurance across state lines: Crony capitalism and the supreme court

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Volumn 81, Issue 4, 2013, Pages 1447-1514

  Calabresi, Steven G ^a,b,c  

^a NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c BROWN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84884791921     PISSN: 00096881     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (113)

1. Focus on Health Reform: How Competitive are State Insurance Markets?, THE HENRY J. KAISER FAMILY FOUND. (Oct. 2011), http://www.kff.org/healthreform/ upIoad/8242.pdf;
2. see also Bob Cook, AMA: Health Plan Market Dominance Causes "Competitive Harm," AM. MED. NEWS (Dec. 10, 2012), http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/12/10/bisb1210.htm.
3. AM. MED. ASS'N, COMPETITION IN HEALTH INSURANCE: A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY OF U.S. MARKETS (2012).
4. HERBERT A. JOHNSON, GIBBONS V. OGDEN: JOHN MARSHALL, STEAMBOATS, AND THE COMMERCE CLAUSE 123 (2010).
5. W. Coast Hotel v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937).
6. Randy E. Bamett, The Original Meaning of the Commerce Clause, 68 U. CHI. L. REV. 101 (2001).
7. Robert G. Natelson, The Legal Meaning of "Commerce," in the Commerce Clause, 80 ST. JOHN'S L. REV. 789 (2006).
8. Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964);
9. Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964).
10. See, e.g., Nat'l Fed'n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 132 S. Ct. 2566, 2677 (2012) (Thomas, J., dissenting);
11. United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 598-99 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring).
12. The argument that the Supreme Court follows presidential and senatorial election returns and is rarely out of step with a majority of the American people is made in: Robert A. Dahl, Decisionmaking in a Democracy: The Supreme Court as a National Policy-Maker, 6 J. PUB. LAW 279 (1957);
13. GERALD N. ROSENBERG, THE HOLLOW HOPE: CAN COURTS BRING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE? (1991).
14. Antonin Scalia, Originalism: The Lesser Evil, 57 U. CIN. L. REV. 849, 862 (1989) (Justice Scalia said this in his William Howard Taft Lecture).
15. JACK M. BAUCIN, LIVING ORIGINALISM 149-52 (2011).
16. THE CHAMBERS DICTIONARY OF ETYMOLOGY (Robert K. Bamhart & Sol Steinmetz eds., 2006).
17. Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964);
18. Katzenbach v. McClung, 379 U.S. 294 (1964).
19. Tyler Pipe Indus., Inc. v. Wash. State Dep't of Revenue, 483 U.S. 232, 254, 259-65 (1987) (Scalia J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).
20. H art. I, § 8, cl. 4. This clause goes on to give Congress exclusive power to pass bankruptcy laws, but, surprisingly, the Marshall Court held in Sturges v. Crowninshield that the power to adopt bankruptcy laws was held concurrently by Congress and the States. 17 U.S. 122, 193-96 (1819).
21. Chief Justice Marshall, joined by Justice Joseph Story seemed to take this back in Ogden v. Saunders. 25 U.S. 213, 335 (1827) (Marshall, C.J., dissenting).
22. Camilla A. Hrdy, State Patent Laws in the Age of Laissez Faire, 28 BERKELEY TECH. L.J. (forthcoming Feb. 2013).
23. MICHAEL GREVE, THE UPSIDE-DOWN CONSTITUTION 211 (2012).
24. GARY LAWSON, GEOFFREY P. MILLER, ROBERT G. NATELSON, & GUY SEIDMAN, THE ORIGINS OF THE NECESSARY and PROPER CLAUSE (2010).
25. JOHN HART ELY, DEMOCRACY AND DISTRUST 85-86 (1980).
26. U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 820-21 (1995).
27. Boyle v. United Tech., 487 U.S. 500, 511-12 (1988).
28. Akhil Reed Amar & Brian C. Kalt, The Presidential Privilege Against Prosecution, 2 NEXUS 11 (1997).
29. Saikrishna Prakash, Our Three Commerce Clauses and the Presumption of Intrasentence Uniformity, 55 ARK. L. REV. 1149 (2003).
30. ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 195 (2012).
31. Lawrence Lessig & Cass R. Sunstein, The President and the Administration, 94 COLUM. L. REV. 1, 72 (1994).
32. Akhil Reed Amar, Some Opinions on the Opinion Clause, 82 VA. L. REV. 647 (1996).
33. Steven G. Calabresi & Saikrishna B. Prakash, The President's Power to Execute the Laws, 104 YALE L.J. 541 (1994).
34. Steven G. Calabresi & Gary Lawson, The Hamdan Case, the Unitary Executive, and the Constitutionality of Jurisdiction Stripping: A Textualist Response to Justice Scalia, 107 COLUM. L. REV. 1002 (2007).
35. Akhil Reed Amar, Philadelphia Revisited: Amending the Constitution Outside Article V, 55 U. CHI. L. REV. 1043 (1988).
36. BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE: FOUNDATIONS (1991);
37. BRUCE ACKERMAN, WE THE PEOPLE: TRANSFORMATIONS 23 (1998);
38. BRUCE ACKERMAN, THE FAILURE OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS: JEFFERSON, MARSHALL, AND THE RISE OF PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRACY (2005);
39. Steven G. Calabresi, The President, the Supreme Court, and the Founding Fathers: A Reply to Professor Ackerman, 73 U. CHI. L. REV. 469 (2006) (book review).
40. See Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams (Sept. 11, 1804),
41. in 11 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 50-51 (Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Ellery Bergh eds., 1904);
42. see also Letter from Thomas Jefferson to George Hay (June 2, 1807),
43. in 11 THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 213-16 (Andrew A. Lipscomb & Albert Ellery Bergh eds., 1904).
44. PAULSEN ET AL., THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 219-38 (2010).
45. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856).
46. Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Merryman Power and the Dilemma of Autonomous Executive Branch Interpretation, 15 CARDOZO L. REV. 81, 84, 88-99 (1993).
47. Steven G. Calabresi, Caesarism, Departmentalism, and Professor Paulsen, 83 MINN. L. REV. 1421, 1425 (1999);
48. see also Gary Lawson, Controlling Precedent: Congressional Regulation of Judicial Decision-Making, 18 CONST. COMMENT. 191 (2001).
49. United States v. Dickerson, 166 F.3d 667 (4th Cir. 1999), rev'd, 530 U.S. 428 (2000).
50. Cooley v. Bd. of Wardens of Port of Phila., 53 U.S. 299 (1851).
51. GERALD GÜNTHER & KATHLEEN SULLIVAN, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 251-52 (15th ed. 2004).
52. Cooley v. Bd. of Wardens of Port of Phila., 53 U.S. 299, 319-20 (1851). GÜNTHER & SULLIVAN, supra note 127, at 250-55.
53. Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U.S. 100 (1890).
54. GÜNTHER & SULLIVAN, supra note 127, at 334; Wilkerson v. Rahrer, 140 U.S. 545 (1891).
55. Id. (citing James Clark Distilling Co. v. W. Md. R. Co., 242 U.S. 311, 330 (1917)).
56. Cooley v. Bd. of Wardens of Port of Phila., 53 U.S. 299, 318 (1851).
57. Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U.S. 408 (1946);
58. see also Robertson v. California, 328 U.S. 440 (1946) (upholding state regulations of insurance backed by criminal penalties as well as the discriminatory state taxation upheld in Prudential); GÜNTHER & SULLIVAN, supra note 127, at 335-36.
59. Noel T. Dowling, Interstate Commerce and State Power - Revised Version, 47 COLUM. L. REV. 547, 555 (1947). Dowling was the original editor of what has now become the GÜNTHER & SULLIVAN casebook, which is cited at note 125.
60. 2 MAX FARRAND, RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787 615-16 (Farrand ed. 1937).
61. Darcy v. Allen, (1602) 77 Eng. Rep. 1260 (K.B.); 11 Co. Rep. 84b.
62. Oren Bracha, The Commodification of Patents 1600-1836: How Patents Became Rights and Why We Should Care, 38 LOY. L.A. REV. 177, 214 n. 209 (2004).
63. Michael Conant, Antimonopoly Tradition Under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments: Slaughter-House Cases Re-Examined, 31 EMORY L.J. 785, 798 (1982) (quoting William Penn as reprinted in A.E. DICK HOWARD, THE ROAD FROM RUNNYMEDE: MAGNA CARTA AND CONSTITUTIONALISM IN AMERICA 621 (1968)).
64. Theodore F.T. Plucknett, Bonham's Case and Judicial Review, 40 HARV. L. REV. 30, 62-63 (1926) reprinted in LAW, LIBERTY, AND PARLIAMENT: SELECTED ESSAYS ON THE WRITINGS OF SIR EDWARD COKE 179 (Allen D. Boyer ed., Liberty Fund 2004).
65. Bernard H. Siegan, Protecting Economic Liberties, 6 CHAP. L. REV. 43, 50 (2003) (quoting Robert E. Riggs, Substantive Due Process in 1791, 1990 Wis. L. REV. 941, 970 (1990)).
66. Thomas G. Barnes, Introduction to Coke on Littleton, reprinted in LAW, LIBERTY, AND PARLIAMENT: SELECTED ESSAYS ON THE WRITINGS OF SIR EDWARD COKE 65 (Allen D. Boyer ed., Liberty Fund 2004).
67. Franklin D. Jones, Historical Development of the Law of Business Competition, 36 YALE L.J. 42, 52 (1926).
68. JAMES MADISON, NOTES OF DEBATES IN THE FEDERAL CONVENTION OF 1787, at 638 (1985).
69. Daniel A. Crane, Lochnerian Antitrust, 1 N.Y.U.J. L. & LIBERTY 496, 506 (2005)
70. (citing DANIEL A. FÄRBER & SUZANNA SHERRY, A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 141 (1990)).
71. Thomas B. Nachbar, Intellectual Property and Constitutional Norms, 104 COLUM. L. REV. 272, 339 (2004) (quoting George Mason to this effect).
72. 1 BERNARD SCHWARTZ, THE BILL OF RIGHTS: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY 617-18 (1971) (quoting a Letter from James Madison to Thomas Jefferson on Oct. 17, 1788).
73. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison (Mar. 6, 1796), available at http://presspubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1-8-7s4.html.
74. James P. Philbin, The Political Economy of the Antifederalists, 11 J. OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES 79, 104 (1994)
75. (citing HERBERT J. STORING, 4 THE COMPLETE ANTI-FEDERALIST 80, 81, 104 (1981)).
76. James W. Ely Jr., To Pursue Any Lawful Trade or Avocation: The Evolution of Unenumerated Economic Rights in the Nineteenth Century, 8 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 917, 931 (quoting Madison) (emphasis added).
77. Donald S. Lutz, The States and the U.S. Bill of Rights, 16 S. III. U. L.J. 251, 251-58 (1992);
78. Donald S. Lutz, The State Constitutional Pedigree of the U.S. Bill of Rights, PUBLIUS 22, 19-20, 27-29 (1992).
79. See Melissa L. Saunders, Equal Protection, Class Legislation, and Colorblindness, 96 MICH. L. REV. 245 (1997) at 255-56;
80. See Mark G. Yudof, Equal Protection, Class Legislation, and Sex Discrimination: One Small Cheer for Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics, 88 MICH. L. REV. 1366, 1372 (1990)
81. (reviewing WILLIAM E. NELSON, THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: FROM POLITICAL PRINCIPLE TO JUDICIAL DOCTRINE 1374-47 (Harv. Univ. Press 1988)).
82. Steven G. Calabresi & Abe Salander, Religion and the Equal Protection Clause: Why School vouchers are Constitutionally Required, FLA. L. REV. (forthcoming 2013).
83. See JOHN LOCKE, Two TREATIES OF GOVERNMENT §§ 123-24 (1764)
84. (describing how "[t]he great and chief end⋯ of [M]ens uniting into [Commonwealths, and putting themselves under [Government, is the (preservation of their Property[P]roperty⋯ their [LJives, [Liberties, and [E]STATES"); SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES ON THE LAWS OF ENGLAND IN FOUR BOOKS, NOTES SELECTED FROM THE EDITIONS OF ARCHBOLD, CHRISTIAN, COLERIDGE, CHITTY, STEWART, KERR, AND OTHERS, BARRON FIELD'S ANALYSIS, AND ADDITIONAL NOTES, AND A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR BY GEORGE SHARSWOOD 124-25 (Phila, J.B. Lippincott Co. 1893) ("[T]he principal aim of society is to protect individuals in the enjoyment of those absolute rights, which were vested in them by the immutable laws of nature; but which could not be preserved in peace without⋯ mutual assistance.,").
85. See Philip A. Hamburger, Equality and Diversity: The Eighteenth-Century Debate about Equal Protection and Equal Civil Rights, 8 SUP. CT. REV. 295, 346 (1992).
86. CONG. GLOBE, 36th Cong., 1st Sess. 174-175 (1860) (Speech by Representative Owen Lovejoy).
87. See THOMAS COOLEY, GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (1880).
88. Andrew Jackson, U.S. President, Address to the Senate Vetoing the Bank of the United States (July 10, 1832), available at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/ 19th-century/ajveto01.asp.
89. The Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV and the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment have been the subject of much recent scholarly attention. Modern scholarship on the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause began with John Harrison, Reconstructing the Privileges or Immunities Clause, 101 YALE L.J. 1385 (1992),
90. which argued that the Clause was an anti-discrimination guarantee and not a font of substantive due process individual rights. Phillip Hamburger reaches the same conclusion in Privileges or Immunities, 105 Nw. U. L. REV. 61 (2011).
91. Akhil Reed Amar and Randy Barnett read the Clause as protecting both against discrimination and as conferring unenumerated individual rights. AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA'S UNWRITTEN CONSTITUTION: THE PRECEDENTS AND PRINCIPLES WE LIVE BY 157 (2012);
92. RANDY E. BARNETT, RESTORING THE LOST CONSTITUTION: THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTY 62-65 (2004).
93. Kurt Lash argues in a series of three law review articles, which he is turning into a book, that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects both against discrimination and that it also protects enumerated but not unenumerated individual rights. Kurt Lash, The Constitutional Referendum of 1866: Andrew Johnson and the Original Meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause (2012);
94. Kurt T. Lash, The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part I: "Privileges and Immunities," as an Antebellum Term of Art, 98 GEO. L. J. 1241 (2010);
95. Kurt T. Lash, The Origins of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, Part II: John Bingham and the Second Draft of the Fourteenth Amendment, 99 GEO. L. J. 329 (2011).
96. Robert Natelson argues in The Original Meaning of the Privileges and Immunities Clause, 43 GA. L. REV. 1117 (2009)
97. for the John Harrison and Phillip Hamburger interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, Section 2. My view of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV, Section 2 and of the similarly worded clause in the Fourteenth Amendment is that they protect: 1) against laws that discriminate on the basis of class or caste or that confer monopolies and that are not just laws enacted for the good of the whole people; and that 2) they protect both enumerated individual rights and unenumerated individual rights that are deeply rooted in history and tradition subject always to the caveat that the states can override such rights if they pass a just law that is enacted for the general good of the whole people. This reading grows out of Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1823), which for better or worse is the foundational case. Philip Hamburger makes a good argument in his law review article cited above that Justice Washington construed the Article IV, Section 2 Clause too narrowly, but I think it is too late in our constitutional history to take that argument very far.
98. Corfield v. Coryell, 6 F. Cas. 546, 552 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1823) (emphasis added).
99. See Steven G. Calabresi et al., State Bills of Rights in 1787 and 1791: What Individual Rights Are Really Deeply Rooted in American History and Tradition?, 85 S. CAL. L. REV. 1451, 1528 (2012).
100. CONG. GLOBE, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 686 (1866) (Statement of Senator Charles Sumner).
101. JAMES MADISON, THE FEDERALIST No. 42 (1788).
102. 2 JOSEPH STORY, COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION § 1800 (1833).
103. Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168, 180 (1868).
104. GUIDO CALABRESI, A COMMON LAW FOR THE AGE OF STATUTES (1982).
105. See, e.g., Hertz v. Friend, 559 U.S. 77 (2010) (continuing to recognize corporations as being citizens of the United States for purposes of the diversity jurisdiction).
106. Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U.S. 408 (1946);
107. 456 W. & S. Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization of Cal., 451 U.S. 648 (1981).
108. A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935).
109. Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 U.S. 116 (1982).
110. Steven G. Calabresi & Nicholas Terrell, The Number of Slates and the Economics of American Federalism, 63 FLA. L. REV. 1 (2011).
111. Prudential Ins. Co. v. Benjamin, 328 U.S. 408 (1946);
112. 456 W. & S. Life Ins. Co. v. State Bd. of Equalization of Cal., 451 U.S. 648 (1981);
113. Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168 (1869).