Why The Heck Did All The Left-Leaning Justices Vote Against Medical Pot?

[Syrinx]

Admittedly, I haven't read the decision, and probably wouldn't understand much of it if I did. But I don't understand why all the supposed liberals on the court voted against medical marijuana. And of the three that voted the correct way (in my opinion), two of them are among my least-favorite justices (Scalia being the other, but you could've probably guessed that).

I just don't understand it. Maybe it was because of a states' rights line of reasoning, but to my mind the case was about patients' rights. Just what were those six justices thinking? What is outlawing MM going to accomplish. I can't think of anything.

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Consistency.

MM was not the legal issue being tested. The relative strength of state and federal regulatory power was.

The broadest possible application of the interstate commerce clause and the regulatory power of Congress is what has make the modern regulatory state possible, from New Deal times on to the present.

These are the justices who adduced the ICC to support the Violence Against Women Ace, for example.

Liberals, God bless them, still act as though things like intellectual consistency, legal principle, and the like still matter. Having applied the 'rational relation' standard in one case, they're compelled to support it in others, unless they can distinguish the cases -- and here they didn't, or couldn't.

Scalia, Thomas, et al. just get to pick the outcome they like amd make shit up later, even if it's internally contradictory.

[Syrinx]

2. thanks for the explanation

I still hate the decision, but your explanation makes it seem a little more reasonable. Thanks!

[wookie294]

3. Great explanation

As a lib who supports legalizing recreational drugs, I supported today's Supreme Court decision. The reasoning used to justify today's decision was used in the 1960s to justify prohibiting discrimination by the states against African Americans. I hope today's decision is used to prevent the "states rights" lunatics from overturning Roe v. Wade and anti-discrimination laws. Clarence Thomas supported the pot smokers today. People should research why he did that before denouncing the Court's decision.

[Syrinx]

6. Thomas is good on porn and pot :)

I'm afraid that if John Paul Stevens retires or dies (he's pretty old) during Bush's term, we will have to kiss Roe v. Wade goodbye. Stevens is the key to preserving a lot of rights we take for granted. Even though I disagree with him on today's decision, I sure hope he doesn't retire until we have a Democrat in the White House. And that's for sure.

[kodi]

13. sure, and they so admitted that they were protecting a blackmarket

how they could invoke the commerce clause because of the impact of home grown weed on the otherwise illegal interstate trafficing of weed is not serious thinking.

essentially they stated that it would be wrong to deprive drug dealers of their commercial profits if cancer victims could grow their own weed instead of being forced to go out to the corner and buy a dime bag.

they invoked the commerce clause because illegal commerce was affected by home grown weed?

is there any precident for using the commerce clause where illegal commerce was the issue? one would venture that the commerce clause was always used in reference to legal commerce, not illegal commerce.

[theboss]

18. A lot of commerce clause reasoning is stretched

And, yes, the commerce clause applies to all forms of interstate commerce, whether legal or illegal. Otherwise, the federal government would have no jurisdiction over the gun running or gambling or what-have-you.

[not systems]

4. Because we are fucked... the best we can hope for is a friendly...

police state instead of a ruthless one.

I don't give a rats ass about consistance or standards
when all the judges do is put another brick in the wall
of the giant north american police state.

Look at Clinton's judges worthless vote today.

Why? Why should I have to pretend that these people
are anything other than apparatichics in a corrupt
and rotton criminal empire.

Unfortunatally it is going to get worse when Bush puts
his torture loving corporate criminals on the court with
bipartisan support.

Argggg...

[seabeyond]

5. that is why the right was bitchin

lol lol. i havent been into this topic. just that repugs were mad too about the decision. since they are spouting out all the time about us liberal pot smoking yada yada i couldnt figure why they wanted it the other way. i thought they would just love the ruling. they dont like the ruling because, lol lol it was the left leaning judges. well, that is funny

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. The court's holding today...

...essentially says that Federal legislation, not state legislation, is the last word on the regulation of marijuana use -- including its legalization.

Nothing else. It was a pre-emption argument.

The issue was whether federal legislation -- in this particular instance anti-marijuana legislation -- pre-empts differing legislation passed by individual states, or not.

The court did not decide on the medical merits of MM.

That wasn't the issue presented.

The court's decision is entirely consistent with the legalization of medical marijuana, or the legalization of marijuana altogether, provided it is done at the federal level.

Elect a Congress that would pass such a law -- as many states have -- and the court would have no problem with it.

[tblue37]

10. Stevens pretty much

invited such federal legislation.

[Sapphire Blue]

8. Hinchey-Rohrabacher amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court puts the medical marijuana issue in Congress' court ... Urge your member of Congress to vote for the Hinchey-Rohrabacher medical marijuana amendment!

http://www.kintera.org/site/c.ijJZJfMOIoE/b.712385/k.CBFE/Home.htm

[BeFree]

9. my 2 cents

The law as written was constitutionally correct.

The judges who supported the law are not activist judges. They followed the constitution. One who voted to hold to the law even said he thought the law should be changed, and he was right on both counts. It is up to congress now.

[theboss]

19. I agree

I support medical marijuana but the states that passed it essentially challenged federal supremacy on the issue. This challenges everything - the Civil Rights Act, the American with Disablities Act, etc - that covers private, non-government behavior. That is why the ruling broke down as it did.

If the "liberals" had voted in favor of MM, they would have opened the door to everything Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas want - the total evisceration of the commerce clause and federal regulation.

[Baclava]

11. Dope will get you through times of no money...

...better than money will get you times of no dope.
\FFFB

[not systems]

12. When the federal government is becoming increasingly retrograde on...

gay marriage, "the drug war", environmental standards and education,
why do people still cling to the idea of supporting further aggregation
of power away from the states.

Many states are consistently more progressive than the federal
government and often have policies attacked by it that are much
better than the national consensus.

People clinging to the glory days of the civil rights era when
federal power mitigated repressive states need to wake up and see
where we are today. Under Bush and under Clinton before him
civil liberties have been eroded consistently.

I think that retrenchment in the blue states against the oppressive
federal policies is our best hope to preserve any freedom in the growing
police state.

[Davis_X_Machina]

14. Look, do you want...

...A. a principled judiciary, or B. a judiciary that just does whatever the fuck it wants.

Because given the case sent up to the Supremes on MM, the only way you get the outcome you want is to choose B.

B is, 99.5% of the time, Scalia-Rehnquist-Thomas jurisprudence.

And I don't want a bench that does B, not if Junta Boy gets to make the next two or three appointments to it.

[not systems]

23. I want a society with increasing personal freedom...

if principals are counter to that goal then the principles
aren't worth anything.

If you think that principle is going to stop Bush's judges
from doing whatever they want you are being like the French
hoping the Maginot line would stop the blitzkrieg.

They will just go around any principle or precedent to
get what they want.

I think the precedent that says the federal government is
supreme over the states in areas that do not involve interstate
commerce or civil rights which are not based on the commerce
clause is bad and overly invasive law.

[nolabels]

15. Not just Bush and Clinton, but Reagan, Carter, NIxon, Johnson, Kennedy....

Etc,Etc,Etc,.. We, the people must demand our rights under all and any costs. It's how we got them and how we keep them. It's time to roll back the federal government and push them off, off of our rights, the ones they think they can trample on in any whim


http://www.worth1000.com/emailthis.asp?image=152055

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

20. You forgot Poland, uh, I mean, Ford. (nt)

[nolabels]

22. Oh, yea! Thanks

:rofl:

That Ford guy lives out by Palm Springs some where and same county, Riverside County, Ca. that we live in. We got a political mailer a couple of years ago with his name plastered all over it. His wine was about the poor state of the roads around the county. What his real beef was he needed the bond measure to go through so the rider that was in the bond, a expansion to fix four freeway on-ranps around his house would also get done. Seemed that extra 15 minutes it took to get on the interstate during rush hour upset his golf schedule

[Freddie Stubbs]

16. The legal question wasn't about the right to use medical pot

It was weather the federal govenrnment had the power to regulate medication under the commerce clause.

[IrateCitizen]

21. Exactly. Their role is not to craft new legislation...

... but to interpret existing legislation and its compatibility with prior precedent, based on the Constitution.

John Paul Stevens, in his majority opinion, said openly that Congress could very easily change the law to make medical marijuana a state legal issue. But under the CURRENT law, it is subject to federal guidelines already in place.

[theboss]

17. Because it was ultimately a commerce clause issue

Everyone has to realize that the Supreme Court does not rule on whether the issue in the case is right or wrong. Ginsberg is not saying that she is against pot, while Thomas wants us all to toke up. They were arguing on the legal process at play.

And the issue at hand is whether the federal government has the right to regulate the use of marijuana under the commerce clause. The liberal justices voted to strengthen the commerce clause, which is the source of nearly all federal regulation since the New Deal. The dissenter voted yet again to weaken the commerce clause.

Everyone is consistent except Scalia who went off on some weird 'necessary and proper' tangent. Scalia is the one justice most likely to twist the law to fit his personal viewpoint.

[Davis_X_Machina]

24. Go Google on the "Constitution in Exile" movement...

...and you'll see why a vigorous defence, in every instance, of the most expansive view possible of the Commerce Clause, and the 'necessary and proper' clause, is the only thing that stands between us and a reversion to the jurisprudence of the McKinley administration.

I think returning to a Lochner-era view of the competence of the state to regulate is the greater of two evils.

You can get black-market dope. You can't get black market air or water.

[mongo]

25. I am so conflicted over this ruling

I do see both sides of the arugment here - and I don't know what to think. If the ruling went the other way, would it mean the end of the federal EPA? How does the spotted owls habitat affect interstate commerce?

I think this case was argued on the wrong points. I wonder if it was argued that an INDIVIDUALS right to grow their own medicine, the right to medical privacy and freedom to make your own medical decisions - outweights the governments right to prohibit pot.

But if that was argued, all personal manufacturing, cultivating and consuming of illictit substances would be up in the air.

The best we can hope for now is to change federal law.

[theboss]

26. The courts are not going to touch that balancing act

Because then the courts would basically be ending the regulation of any drugs. And that would be a huge over-stepping of authority.

[mongo]

27. Maybe

But you are also talking about a decision made by a patient and a liscensed physician - to use medical marijuanna.

I think it might be sucsusfully argued that the individual right of a patient and his physician to make private medical decisions without undue government intervention outweights the federal governments prohibition on MJ.

[theboss]

28. But...once again...that would bring down the entire concept of the FDA

If the decisions made between a physician and patient are sacred, then the government has no right to regulate any drug. And I don't think we want to start down that path.

If the drug in question was not marijuana but say...thalidomide...we wouldn't be having this discussion. Marijuana makes it somewhat emotional and you need to remove that from the decision.

[mongo]

29. MJ is somewhat unique

in that there is a ton of evidence supporting its safe and effective use - and yet the FDA won't support it.

The fact that it's a plant and not a pharmaceutical compound should place it outside the FDA's control.

But you're right. What would there be to stop a physician from prescribing opium to manage pain?

Perhaps a slippery slope, but there has to be a middle ground here. There is a difference between a cancer patient growing some plants in her backyard, and the problems with patent medicine that was the inspiration for the FDA.

[theboss]

30. That's why there is separation of powers

It's not up to the courts to decide which drugs should be legal and which should not. Congress has to change the law.