Law and Legal blog

Chief Justice Roberts Exercises the Swing Vote as the US Supreme Court Upholds the 'Individual Mandate' in Obama's Health Care Law : The US Supreme Court handed down its decision in  National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius yesterday  and upheld the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act. In this post, my attempt is to provide a clear and simple analysis of the issues involved and the opinions expressed in the case. It would be stating the obvious to say that today's decision had tremendous institutional and political significance. The extent of its importance may be understood from the fact that the court, in a rare departure from the usual one hour of oral arguments, allocated six hours to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of the the Affordable Care Act ('ACA').  There were primarily three issues for determination before the U.S Supreme Court in  National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius : 1. Cons...

The Legal Context to the Supreme Court of Pakistan's Disqualification of Prime Minister Gilani : (I must thank Professor Ali Qazilbash at the Department of Law and Policy, Lahore University of Management Sciences for answering some of my basic questions concerning this controversy and constitutional law in Pakistan. Any inaccuracies, however, are my own responsibility.) To better understand the order of the Supreme Court of Pakistan disqualifying Prime Minister Gilani, it might be useful to get a grip on the legal context in which this order was handed down. My apologies for making this largely a descriptive post but I think it might help readers better understand the complexities involved and avoid a narrow and superficial analysis like the one reflected in  Justice Katju's opinion piece in The Hindu. Pakistan's Involvement in the Swiss Case Against Benazir Bhutto and Asif Ali Zardari The genesis of this issue can be traced back to 1997 when the Advocate General of...