| Sumario: | Adversarial legalism is concerned with policymaking, policy implementation, and the resolution of disputes centered primarily on the work of lawyers (Kagan, 2001). Adversarial legalism in social welfare cases pits the government against an individual or a group willing to assert pertinent rights in accordance with law. Alone or combined, elected officials' policy making, "neutral" adjudications by the judiciary, and/or implementation of policies by government agencies almost always lead to (further) disputation, because not all community members are pleased with a given outcome. This paper contributes to the extant literature by analyzing the adversarial legalism-Affordable Care Act (ACA) nexus. The invocation of law against government by aggrieved persons to curtail, or eliminate, the ACA, a social welfare policy, is a veritable form of adversarialism. Because the American people subscribe to the rule of law, the use of lawsuits in furthering rights assertion would remain the American way of life for the foreseeable future.
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