Barnett on Raich
Randy Barnett, the oralist for the Respondents, has a short piece on Gonzales v. Raich on National Review Online. Here’s a taste:
- The Ninth Circuit finally got its revenge on the Supreme Court justices who seemed to delight in reversing it. In Gonzales v. Raich, it gave the conservatives a choice: Uphold the Ninth Circuit’s ruling favoring individuals engaged in the wholly intrastate non-economic activity of growing and consuming cannabis for medical purposes as recommended by a doctor and permitted by state law, or retreat from the landmark Commerce Clause decisions of U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000). Either way the Ninth Circuit wins. But with Justices Kennedy and Scalia on the liberal side of the Court, the Ninth Circuit won big. So did Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who first implemented this strategy in the child-porn case of U.S. v. McCoy.