Healthcare, Environmental Law, and the Supreme Court: An Analysis Under the Commerce, Necessary and Proper, and Tax and Spending Clauses
The nation’s healthcare and environmental laws share some common features. Both require individuals to participate in certain markets, are steeped in the principles of cooperative federalism, and attach federal dollars to compliance. Thus, the Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius has the potential to influence the nation’s federal environmental laws in new ways. First, the logical, if attenuated, extension of the Court’s conclusion that the Commerce Clause does not permit Congress to compel individuals to purchase health insurance suggests some limits on the extent to which Congress may compel participation in certain pollution-control and abatement markets. Second, the Court’s decision that Congress cannot “compel” states to adopt the Medicaid extension under the threat of losing all Medicaid funding suggests further limits on the extent to which Congress may withhold funding from states that do not or cannot implement federal environmental laws. Lastly, the basis for upholding the individual mandate as a tax actually has the potential to provide additional constitutional justification for federal environmental laws should the Court ever reconsider their Commerce Clause foundations. Nonetheless, the Sebelius opinion is unlikely to have a significant impact on federal environmental laws because they can be effectively distinguished from the Court’s healthcare ruling.
Limiting the Property Clause
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the Property Clause of the Constitution grants Congress the power to regulate the public lands “without limitation.” This Article argues that the Court’s interpretation of the Property Clause is inconsistent with constitutional history, antithetical to structure principles of federalism, and undesirable from the standpoint of environmental law. Relying on new historical evidence, this Article contends that, when the country originally debated the meaning of the Property Clause, the leading statesmen of the early Republic rejected a broad interpretation of federal power. In sum, they believed that, while Congress should have a police power over the territories, it should have no more regulatory authority over federal land within a state by virtue of the Property Clause than a private landowner. Under this approach, federal legislation under the Property Clause would have no preemptive effect on state law. 
 
This Article further argues that, if the Court’s recent efforts to revive federalism are to be meaningful, it should return to the original understanding of the Property Clause. Congress’s unlimited legislative power over federal lands enables it overrule state policy on many of the core issues of state concern that justify the existence of federalism, including environmental law. This Article also advances the counterintuitive argument that reinvigorating federalism in this context would structurally favor more robust environmental regulation. While the federal government would retain the power to limit the use of its lands as a proprietor, the states would have the power to go beyond federal policy and prevent environmentally destructive activities as sovereign regulators. However, because the state’s regulatory power would not include the power to override federal property rights, the states would not have the power to authorize any land use that would conflict with federal rules. Unlike the current system of federal supremacy, a limited reading of the Property Clause would thus structurally favor conservation over development.
The MR-TOF-MS isobar separator for the TITAN facility at TRIUMF
At TRIUMF’s Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear Science (TITAN) a multiple-reflection time-of-flight mass spectrometer (MR-TOF-MS) will extend TITAN’s capabilities and facilitate mass measurements and in-trap decay spectroscopy of exotic nuclei that so far have not been possible due to strong isobaric contamination. This MR-TOF-MS will also enable mass measurements of very short-lived nuclides (half-life > 1 ms) that are produced in very low quantities (a few detected ions overall). In order to allow the installation of an MR-TOF-MS in the restricted space on the platform, on which the TITAN facility is located, novel mass spectrometric methods have been developed. Transport, cooling and distribution of the ions inside the device is done using a buffer gas-filled RFQ-based ion beam switchyard. Mass selection is achieved using a dynamic retrapping technique after time-of-flight analysis in an electrostatic isochronous reflector system. Only due to the combination of these novel methods the realization of an MR-TOF-MS based isobar separator at TITAN has become possible. The device has been built, commissioned off-line and is currently under installation at TITAN.