Do you wish you had a good context for the oral arguments that are coming up this month about the individual mandate and the health reform law passed by Congress in 2010?

A lot of articles will appear in the coming weeks, but this one from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Health News section provides a nice overview and timeline. While the arguments will occur this month, there is no guaranteed date when the justices will make their decision public. The article is called The Health Law and the Supreme Court: A Primer for the Upcoming Oral Arguments and is published at the Kaiser Health News website, a great resource for health and health care related topics. The author, Stuart Taylor, Jr. wrote:

How big is the constitutional challenge to the Obama health care law, which the Supreme Court will hear on March 26-28?

For starters, it’s big enough for the justices to schedule six hours of arguments — more time than given to any case since 1966. After all, the Affordable Care Act is arguably the most consequential domestic legislation since the creation of Medicare in 1965.

It’s also big enough to attract more briefs than any other case in history. At least 170, including more than 120 “friend-of-the-court” or amicus briefs, have been filed, many of which are joined by 10, 20 or more groups of every imaginable description.

And, finally, it’s big enough to cause the justices to postpone until October half of the 12 cases that they would ordinarily hear in April in order to clear time to get started on the health care opinions that they are expected to issue by the late June, or possibly, early July.