Jurisprudence Commons^™

Crops, Guns & Commerce: A Game Theoretical Critique Of Gonzales V. Raich, Maxwell L. Stearns

George Mason University School of Law Working Papers Series

In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court sustained an application of the Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”), banning all private use of marijuana, as applied to two women who had cultivated or otherwise acquired marijuana for the treatment of severe pain pursuant to the California Compassionate Use Act. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens placed Raich at the intersection of two landmark Commerce Clause precedents: Wickard v. Filburn, the notorious 1942 decision, which upheld a penalty under the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 applied to a local farmer who violated his wheat quota but who had used the modest excess portion …

Morals-Based Justifications For Lawmaking: Before And After Lawrence V. Texas, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

Morals-Based Justifications for Lawmaking: Before and After Lawrence v. Texas looks in depth at the dissonance between the Supreme Court’s rhetorical support for morals-based lawmaking and the Court’s jurisprudence. In taking this approach, the article responds to a central post-Lawrence question regarding the sufficiency of a government’s moral agenda as a justification for restricting individual rights. It turns out, on close review of the cases going back to the mid-1800s, that the Court has almost never relied explicitly on a morals rationale to sustain an allegedly rights-infringing government action.

The article develops several explanations for this avoidance of explicit morals …