Garrett and the Spending Clause

[Lynne Henderson]

THis thread--and, indeed many liike it concerning the "new
Federalism"--makes me wonder--why have a National government at all on the
view of  an admittedly slim majority of the  Court?  The "powers" are so
limited, or could be so limited,  that the states become sovereign and the
US a chimera.
I am stating this strongly because I really do wonder why bother with a
nation at all if tradition, the Civil War Amendments, etc. do not support a
strong national government  (I of course disagree, but I want to know why
state sovereignty remains such a fetish for the Justices)
Best
Lynne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sanford Levinson" <SLevinson at MAIL.LAW.UTEXAS.EDU>
To: <CONLAWPROF at listserv.ucla.edu>
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 12:51 PM
Subject: Re: Garrett and the Spending Clause


> Keith very sensibly says, with regard to disaster relief statutes, that "I
> doubt that the Court is the appropriate institution to make the
> case-by-case distinctions between federal acts that are truly general and
> those that are merely local."  What does he think, then, of Morrison,
which
> does seem to rest on such a view of judicial capacity.  Of is it that "we"
> have come to regard disaster relief as a "traditional" activity of the
> (modern) national government, but that the Court's majority hangs on to a
> notion by which it is "untraditional" for the national government to
> regulate domestic violence even when thoroughly reasonable people can
> believe, say, that the costs to the economy of domestic violence are at
> least as high as the cost, say, of forest fires in Montana?  (I realize
> that the hook there is that the forests are probably federal property.  So
> perhaps I should use as the illustration the flooding of family farms in
> Iowa.)  And, of course, it is far easier to insure against flood damage
> than to insure successfully against domestic violence.
>
> sandy