"Doobious"
Ryan Grim in Salon.com:
Monday was not a good day for federalists. "Scalia went off the reservation," says George Mason University law professor and libertarian David Bernstein.[...]
Adding to the anti-federalist insult, the majority opinion [in the medical marijuana case] was based on Wickard vs. Filburn, a 1942 ruling -- the bane of originalists -- that forbade a wheat farmer from growing more than his quota of wheat on his farm, even though it was for personal consumption. "You want to say [Scalia] just looked at the law," says Bernstein, "but it's difficult ... I don't know a single serious originalist who thinks Wickard was decided right." Well, not until Monday, anyway. So what was Scalia thinking?
[...]
Antonin Scalia's dilemma was perhaps the trickiest of all. In the thick of his campaign for chief justice, he had to stick somewhere near his expressed principles, not piss off Republicans in Congress and the White House -- and, of course, make sure there are no hippies smoking legal marijuana anywhere in his United States. "Scalia tends to be more interested in originalism when it fits into his Catholic social conservatism," says Bernstein, "or when he's using it to bludgeon the left."
In all his time on the Court, I've never -- not even once -- thought that Justice Antonin Scalia allowed his personal views to influence his understanding of the law. Even when I disagreed with him, he was, I thought, a principled jurist.
But his decision to join the majority in Gonzales v. Raich, the medical marijuana case, is suspicious. As an originalist, Justice Scalia knows better. The Court's judgment was disappointing; but Justice Scalia's joining of it was disillusioning.
(Editorial cartoon courtesy of Cox & Forkum.)