Supreme Court Medical Marijuana

[TomCollins]

Please do not vote if you already know the answer.
The vote was 6-3 against use of medical marijuana.

Which three justices voted for the pot smokers?

[TomCollins]

For those of you who don't follow the court too much:

Typical voting blocks:

Scalia, Thomas, Rehnquist = Conservative
O'Connor, Kennedy = Swing
Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter = Liberal

[Jakesta]

O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Thomas.

O'Connor because she is for states rights most of the time. Rehnquist and Thomas because they respect the constitution, and they are not liberal pigs like those who voted for this abomination.

No surprise to me that the Court's socialists authored this ruling.

Scalia wrote a separate affirmation of it, but the 5 pro-Justice Department votes were from the court commies.

That little nerd Ginsburg was the biggest supporter of this law.

[nokona13]

Um, either your response is really mixed up, or you didn't notice that the court actually ruled that the federal government could prosecute people regardless of medical marijuana laws...

[Broken Glass Can]

Just as long as they don't take away my medical heroin. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[elwoodblues]

While I think banning medical marijuana is stupid, shouldn't it be the legislatures job to overturn the applicable federal law, not the court's. Without knowing many of the details of the case, this seems like a pretty obvious case of federal preemption. I'm not able to see the arguments of the other side (despite the stirring logic of the "pinko commie" reply in this thread.)

[nokona13]

Yeah I didn't quite understand this either. When I read about it back during arguments, it seemed the judges supporting the federal goverment were mostly basing their reasoning on the commerce clause, but these people were indisputably growing their own and not selling to others, so I didn't quite get how the federal goverment's right to regulate interstate commerce could apply here. Anyone?

[TomCollins]

I don't know why I was surprised by who actually made a ruling on this. But it makes a lot more sense. The states rights crowd of course rejected this. There is no interstate commerce here, thus no federal justification for having any authority on the issue.

I did find it ironic that two of the three justices here are probably among the three most hated by the pro-MM crowd.

[Jakesta]

No. I am a liberal, and I think Clarence Thomas is one of the great Supreme Court justices.

[vulturesrow]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah I didn't quite understand this either. When I read about it back during arguments, it seemed the judges supporting the federal goverment were mostly basing their reasoning on the commerce clause, but these people were indisputably growing their own and not selling to others, so I didn't quite get how the federal goverment's right to regulate interstate commerce could apply here. Anyone?

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the salient point from the majority opinion:

...have identified three general categories
of regulation in which Congress is authorized to engage
under its commerce power. First, Congress canregulate the channels of interstate commerce. Perez v. United States, 402 U. S. 146, 150 (1971). Second, Congress has authority to regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and persons or things in interstate commerce. Ibid. Third, Congress has the power to regulate
activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.
Ibid.; NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 37 (1937). Only the third category is implicated in the case at hand.
Our case law firmly establishes Congress’ power to regulate purely local activities that are part of an economic
“class of activities” that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. See, e.g., Perez, 402 U. S., at 151;Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111, 128–129 (1942). As we stated in Wickard, “even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.” Id., at 125. We have never required Congress to legislate with scientific exactitude. When Congress decides that the “ ‘total incidence’ ” of a practice poses a threat to a national market, it may regulate the entire class. See Perez, 402 U. S., at 154–155 (quoting Westfall v. United States, 274 U. S. 256, 259 (1927) (“[W]hen it is necessary in order to prevent an evil to make the law embrace more than the precise thing to be prevented it may do so”)). In this vein, we have reiterated that when “‘a general regulatory statute bears a substantial relation to commerce, the de minimis character of individual instances arising under that statute is of no consequence.’” E.g., Lopez, 514 U. S., at 558 (emphasis
deleted) (quoting Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183, 196, n. 27 (1968)).

Obviously the dissenters disagreed with this but I havent gotten all the way through all the opinions yet other than quick skim.

Here is the link to download the PDF:

Gonzales vs. Raich