High on the Commerce Clause

The unfortunate implications of the medical marijuana ruling.

The editors of The Wall Street Journal weigh in on Monday's Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Raich. At issue in the case was whether state law regarding medical marijuana is superseded by federal law. The court held that federal law may indeed trump state law in this case. The problem, as The Wall Street Journal points out, is that there is little constitutional basis for this argument. Indeed, the court's reliance on the interstate commerce clause in a case in which there was no interstate commerce of any kind shows a vast judicial overreach. Cases such as this are the hallmark of an activist judiciary that simply ignores the original intent of the constitution and writes laws from the bench.

The constitution is clear that the federal government should be one of enumerated and limited powers and that all those powers not so enumerated should be exercised by the states, or the people respectively. Simply put, states get to make their own laws unless they are trumped by a written constitutional principle. But since the New Deal the constitution has been re-written by activist judges to push through policies which have no basis in the idea of limited government. And now we have one more example of the federal government undermining state's rights. This is just one more example of why we need an overhaul of the judicial branch of government with an emphasis on judges who will enforce the constitution as it is written rather than making it up as they go along.