When the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act’s
provision for an individual mandate to buy medical insurance
constitutional, the majority did so by placing the mandate
within Congress’s power to tax rather than under the Commerce
clause. While the decision keeps most of the law intact, what
does it mean politically? And how will the characterization of
the mandate as a tax play among supporters and opponents of the
legislation? Supreme Court rulings on politically prominent
issues can have three effects on subsequent attitudes among the
public: legitimation, backlash or polarization. As Nathan
Persily, Jack Citrin and Patrick Egan show in their 2008 book,
“Public Opinion and Constitutional Controversy,” legitimation
occurs when public opinion moves in line with the court, as it
has over time with regard to the 1954 Brown v. Board of
Education school integration decision and to gender equality
decisions like Stanton v. Stanton in 1975, which invalidated
laws predicated on traditional gender roles tha