What I have trouble understanding is how Scalia’s deciscion here can be made consistant with his deciscion in the case stricking down no gun zones around schools. I mean if the CSA can be used to stop assisted suicide just because it is a broad framework to regulate drugs (no way can you claim it is a broad framework to regulate assisted suicide) why could you not ban guns in 500 feet of schools as part of the broad regulatory framework to prevent people from doing ‘bad things with guns.’

In Raich, there was a federal statute (the Controlled Substances Act) that gave the federal government power to regulate cannabis. But here, the opinion seems to suggest that Ashcroft usurped his grant of power, and was relying on an implied grant of power to deregister the doctors. If Congress passes a statute addressing this issue, then the AG would have the power that Ashcroft attempted to exercise.

I do have legal education and am equally confused, especially when the CSA Reguations exempt from the statute’s reach doctor issued prescriptions having a legitimate medical purpose. One would think that prescribing marijuana for medicinal purposes would be valid, but prescribing morphine to cause death would not. . . .

I’m a lay person with no legal education whatsoever, but the inconsistency rankles me, especially as I saw Raich as a horrible decision by the fairweather federalists on the bench.

The only member of the Court to take a consistent stand against federal power in Lopez, Raich, and Oregon was Justice O’Connor, and she is retiring. Even if Roberts follows in Rehnquist’s footsteps as a staunch supporter of federalism, the bulk of the Court is all over the map on this issue.

Back when Democrats controlled Congress for decades, political conservatives argued passionately for the importance of federalism. Now that Republicans are in control of federal legislation, you don’t hear those passionate arguments quite as often. (The reverse, of course, is true with respect to liberals; many of them have now become devout champions of states’ rights.) It seems the same developments are being mirrored in the voting patterns of the Court.

You’d like to think that a Supreme Court Justice, of all people, has a pretty consistent view with respect to the balance of power between the Federal and State governments. And yet, we see the “conservative” Justices voting to uphold conservative actions at the federal level, and we see the “liberal” Justices voting to uphold liberal actions and strike down conservative ones. Funny how that works.

It’s ironic that Justice O’Connor, so often criticized for deciding cases on a fact-specific basis without any overarching judicial philosophy, stands out as the only Justice who held true to her principles across the board in this case.