I heard NPR’s Nina Totenberg report on Raich v. Ashcroft this evening. She ended her segment by suggesting that “by the end of the argument, it wasn’t clear that Barnett had even one vote for his position,” or words to that effect. Solum’s transcript of the argument suggests otherwise, and I think that Randy did a great job. Whether that will be enough to overcome the statist liberal obssession with ensuring that every aspect of human life may be regulated by the federal government (despite a profound lack of constitutional legitimacy for such a position), and the statist conservative obssession with making marijuana users into criminals, remains to be seen. I’m not optimistic, largely because I think that the Court tends to take cues from the political branches, and the conservatives Randy needs to win over aren’t exactly getting the sort of strong limited-government signals from Republicans in Congress they were getting in 1995, when the Court began its so-called “federalism revolution” (hah!) in Lopez.
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