by J. Craig Anderson and Ryan Randazzo - Jun. 30, 2012 11:12 PM The Republic | azcentral.com

With the U.S. Supreme Court's approval last week, the Affordable Care Act entered an elite canon of laws that have rewritten the social contract between American citizens and their government.

They include the Social Security Act of 1935, Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the amendment to the Social Security Act that created Medicare and Medicaid, also in 1965.

Each added or altered social protections for large groups of Americans, but not without passionate debate and fierce constitutional challenges.

While the Affordable Care Act's ultimate place in history has yet to be determined, historians and legal scholars said if the past is a guide, the legislation will eventually become an accepted part of American society.

The health-care law "will have implications for tens of millions, including 30 million who will get access to health insurance and many more millions that will be affected by insurance-regulation reforms," said Lawrence Jacobs, a political-science professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Upheld Thursday by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision, it requires almost everyone to obtain health coverage and guarantees it will be available to those previously uninsured or uninsurable.

Jacobs said the scope of the program places it in the same league as the programs of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society.

"The Supreme Court has signed off on a piece of legislation that is as sweeping and perhaps more sweeping than any social-welfare legislation in half a century and perhaps since the New Deal," said Jacobs, co-author of the 2010 book "Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know."

"The number of people impacted by this health policy is enormous," he said. "It really opens a new day for financing and delivery of health care."

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Health-care bill one of many historic social laws