Tuesday, June 26, 2012

How Did SCOTUS Rediscover Limits on Commerce Clause?

It is impressive that we went from "not a serious question" complacency on the question of "Commerce Clause allows everything, everywhere" to "OMG, the court is so activist!"

Damon Root gives a terrific backgrounding to the "radical" idea that the Commerce Clause be a limiter, as well as an enabler, of federal overreach.

Great, great piece by Will Wilkinson.  Nice.

We'll see what happens.  But at least the thing is in play, which is nice to see.  And it is interesting to note that it is likely to be the left that will now argue for some bite for the limits, since the states are actually doing the right thing and trying to decriminalize medical marijuana, but the feds hate to give up their entirely unjustifed enforcement monopoly.

1 comment:

JWO said...

The thing that gets me about how the commerce clause is used, is that they interpreted it very broadly but never used it to limit state and local governments from using tax payer money to attract businesses which is a negative sum act.