Miami Herald
By Cammy Clark
Key Largo -- Despite graduating with a history degree from Emory University,Elizabeth Price Foley knew little about the U.S. Constitution when she worked on healthcare legislation for two Democratic congressmen.
It was not until the early 1990s — when she left Capitol Hill to attend law school in Tennessee — that she discovered just how little she knew or had cared about the country’s founding legal document.
“I realized all the work I was doing on the Hill was kind of ludicrous,” she said. “I was operating under a knowledge vacuum, with no cognizance of whether the bills I were writing and promoting were constitutional. … The attitude was do what we want to do and let the courts stop us.”
Today, Foley, 46, of Key Largo, calls herself a “constitutional geek.” She can speak passionately for hours about the 224-year-old evolving document.
“She is one of constitutional law’s rising stars,” said Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Foley's third book, The Tea Party: Three Principles, was published in February by Cambridge University Press. It follows The Law of Life & Death (Harvard University Press 2011) and Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (Yale University Press 2006).
“For a relatively young law professor to publish three influential books with Harvard, Yale and Cambridge is a pretty freaking big deal,” Reynolds said. “And where she is different from some people who publish a lot of books is that she also is able to talk to people outside legal academia.”
That’s important, he said, because constitutional law and the Constitution are supposed to be understandable to all people.
Foley also co-wrote an amicus “friend of the court” brief for the blockbuster Affordable Healthcare Act case that recently went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Foley and Steve Simpson argued the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unenforceable because it violates contract law that requires all agreements to be voluntary by all parties.
“I wanted the court to realize if it upholds this exercise of power under the interstate commerce power, it gives the federal government the ability to force us into any kind of contract for the rest of our lives,” she said. “They could force us into contracts of employment, mortgage agreements and into unions. Not just make us buy stuff.
“For someone who is into liberty, that scares the bajeebees out of me.”
Of the more than 100 amicus briefs filed for that case, Washington Post columnist George F. Will wrote in March that the one written by Foley and Simpson merited special attention because of its “elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central to the debate as it should be.”
Foley now splits her time between teaching constitutional law and practicing it. She is a founding faculty member at Florida International University’s College of Law, where she also teaches civil procedure and health law/bioethics.
This past year she cut her class load to become executive director of the newly formed Florida Chapter of the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm based near Washington that handles major cases in which individuals’ basic rights have been violated by the government.
Note: While a resident of Keys Gate, Elizabeth Foley worked to achieve Homeowner's Rights and Liberties from the Keys Gate Community Association.
It was not until the early 1990s — when she left Capitol Hill to attend law school in Tennessee — that she discovered just how little she knew or had cared about the country’s founding legal document.
“I realized all the work I was doing on the Hill was kind of ludicrous,” she said. “I was operating under a knowledge vacuum, with no cognizance of whether the bills I were writing and promoting were constitutional. … The attitude was do what we want to do and let the courts stop us.”
Today, Foley, 46, of Key Largo, calls herself a “constitutional geek.” She can speak passionately for hours about the 224-year-old evolving document.
“She is one of constitutional law’s rising stars,” said Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law.
Foley's third book, The Tea Party: Three Principles, was published in February by Cambridge University Press. It follows The Law of Life & Death (Harvard University Press 2011) and Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of Public Morality (Yale University Press 2006).
“For a relatively young law professor to publish three influential books with Harvard, Yale and Cambridge is a pretty freaking big deal,” Reynolds said. “And where she is different from some people who publish a lot of books is that she also is able to talk to people outside legal academia.”
That’s important, he said, because constitutional law and the Constitution are supposed to be understandable to all people.
Foley also co-wrote an amicus “friend of the court” brief for the blockbuster Affordable Healthcare Act case that recently went before the U.S. Supreme Court. Foley and Steve Simpson argued the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unenforceable because it violates contract law that requires all agreements to be voluntary by all parties.
“I wanted the court to realize if it upholds this exercise of power under the interstate commerce power, it gives the federal government the ability to force us into any kind of contract for the rest of our lives,” she said. “They could force us into contracts of employment, mortgage agreements and into unions. Not just make us buy stuff.
“For someone who is into liberty, that scares the bajeebees out of me.”
Of the more than 100 amicus briefs filed for that case, Washington Post columnist George F. Will wrote in March that the one written by Foley and Simpson merited special attention because of its “elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central to the debate as it should be.”
Foley now splits her time between teaching constitutional law and practicing it. She is a founding faculty member at Florida International University’s College of Law, where she also teaches civil procedure and health law/bioethics.
This past year she cut her class load to become executive director of the newly formed Florida Chapter of the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit, public interest law firm based near Washington that handles major cases in which individuals’ basic rights have been violated by the government.
Note: While a resident of Keys Gate, Elizabeth Foley worked to achieve Homeowner's Rights and Liberties from the Keys Gate Community Association.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/22/2759195_fiu-law-professor-publishes-third.html
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