Deference to Congress and Boumediene

[DavidEBernstein at aol.com]

The fact that the decisions were, in fact, rather inconsequential, didn't  
prevent some rather alarmist articles, books, and essays about how the Court was 
 somehow returning the United States to the pre-New Deal stone ages.
 
As for liberty, there is a long tradition, which some of us still adhere  to, 
holding that limiting federal power is in fact a very important aspect of  
liberty, even if the facts of Lopez and Morrison were not terribly relevant  to 
that goal.  Consider, instead of those two cases, Gonzalez v.  Raich.
 
In a message dated 6/17/2008 7:57:08 PM Eastern Daylight Time,  
bickersj1 at nku.edu writes:

Isn't this an  apples-oranges comparison?  When the Court was reigning in 
Congress and  the President as to Commerce, there wasn't really any interest on 
the opposite  side.  After all, nothing about the act at issue in Lopez 
preempted any  state prohibition of guns in schools.  The Court's decision wasn't 
even  protective of future defendants: Congress simply repassed the statute, with 
 the jurisdictional element that the Chief Justice suggested, and life went  
on.  One may agree or disagree with the results, or the institutional  
relationships they suggest, but those cases seem to be purely about separation  of 
powers, and not about liberty.


 



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