Earlier this year, in United States v. Comstock, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that portions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, enacted in 2006, exceeded the scope of Congress commerce clause power. Specifically, the court held that the commerce power could not be used to civilly commit a "sexually dangerous person" in federal prison once that individual has completed his entire priison sentence. Eugene and Ilya blogged on the decision here.
Yesterday, SCOTUSBlog reports, Chief Justice Roberts stayed the implementation of the Fourth Circuit's holding — delaying the release of the sex offenders who had challenged the law — pending consideration of the government's petition for certiorari. Like Eugene, I expect this case will go up. If so, it will be a critically important case, as it could determine whether any limits of the scope of federal power remain after Gonzales v. Raich.
Neither did Raich, which did not involve any buying or selling.
i guess it's conceivable that the sct uses raich to find, for example, that the civil commitment of allegedly sexually dangerous people in BOP custody is "necessary and proper" to either 1) prevent the violation of federal sex crime statutes; or 2) prevent the violation of that subset of federal sex crime statutes which (peripherally) regulate economic activities (e.g., arguably, child porn). but the govt didn't make argument #2 below, and the link between civil commitment - preventing violation of federal statutes - necessary and proper clause is pretty thin under either theory.
In general, essentially anything in social life can potentially be bought and sold, from friendships to opinions to judgeships to legislation, and certainly sex. Everything and anything in life can, so far as objective evidence and empiricism is concerned, be made into a commodity. Whether it should be or it is moral for it to be is beside the point.
One of the difficulties with Raich is that the only thing it exempts from the commerce clause are the things the Justices think ought not to be treated as commodities. Thus, it is only the Justices' current personal views of morality -- of how things ought to be -- that lets anything at all escape federal regulation
Boy, that Hamilton guy sure was a chump.
Besides, if offenders move, they will eat a famer's output in a different state, or something like that.
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