Here's an interesting article about a case that just had oral arguments before the Supreme Court.
It's hard to reconcile my position on this matter. I guess in the end, I'm all about Federalism. Even if states are stupid enough to make mistakes, the Feds should probably stay outta the way. Commerce Clause be damned.
Here's another article pointing out the upcoming issue.
This is an interesting case. The recent trend of cases (and I can't remember all of the names, one involves the Regents of the Univesity of Florida, I think) on federalism have come down in favor of the states and have imposed limitations on federal power. These so-called "states rights" cases I believe have been criticized in liberal circles as being a code word or judicial sanctioning of discrimination. Nonetheless, because the case involves marijuana, it will be interesting to see if the federalism wing of the Court, Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, and probably Kennedy, stay true to the course, and whether what I would call the "humanist" wing, Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, which presumably in general principle would not have a problem with medicinal marijuana, would jump ship into the federalism crowd on this issue. In other words, would the justices who have been on other side of the federalism issue in recent cases switch positions because of the peculiar facts of the case? We'll have to see I guess.
ReplyDeleteHumanist? I like that.
ReplyDeleteBut now I'm confused. I'm generally in favor of limited Federal government (not including federal judges and their staff). I suppose that's fairly Libertarian of me, but I don't expect to do more than flirt with the ideology of choice of our left-coast compadre.
I'll keep a sharp watch on the decision and the reasoning that forms its basis. Keep me posted.
Well, I'm going to retract my previous comment. The cases I was thinking about actually concern whether Congress has the authority to abrogate the states' sovereign immunity pursuant to the Commerce Clause for purposes of federal employment discrimination statutes. The answer in these cases was no.
ReplyDeleteThe marijauna case presents a different issue. I just did a really brief survey of some circuit court cases and it appears that they hold that Congress rationally and reasonably concluded that even only INTRASTATE sales of drugs can have an impact on INTERSTATE COMMERCE. Therefore, the criminal drug statutes, found in Title 21, can properly be used to punish only intrastate drug trafficking activity. Therefore, my prediction is that the Court will upnold the application of the federal statute in this case, and that the California medicinal marijuana statute will bow to the federal statute under the Supremacy Clause.
Do you mean the intrastate sale of illegal drugs?
ReplyDeleteStill a very interesting issue, although your analysis is the first I've seen to indicate the Supremacy Clause. Perhaps you should begin to send articles out under a pseudonym, earn a little extra coin!
Yeah, a couple of circuit court cases state that the intrastate sale of illegal drugs affects interstate commerce. The Supremacy Clause seemed like an obvious issue to me, but just as obviously, you don't get there if Congress overreached it powers under the Commerce Clause to begin with. We'll have to see how this pans out. My interest is now piqued.
ReplyDelete