Earlier this month the Supreme Court issued its ruling in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, the closely-watched "medical marijuana" case. By a vote of eight to zero (Justice Breyer recused himself because his brother was the district court judge in the case below), the Court reversed the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and reached the unsurprising conclusion that properly authorized federal law prevails over state law. It was a holding as old as the Constitution itself, which provides in Article VI that "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme Law of the Land." One might challenge the application of federal drug laws to wholly intrastate manufacture and distribution as outside the scope of Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause, but that claim was not part of the case. Instead, the Ninth Circuit had held that there was an implied "medical necessity" exemption to the federal drug laws. The Supreme Court unanimously held otherwise.
It was the fifth time the Ninth Circuit had been reversed in a month. Seven of eight cases already decided by the high Court this year from the Ninth Circuit have been reversed, and six of those seven were by unanimous or nearly unanimous rulings. A few years ago, the Supreme Court even took the extraordinary step of issuing a special order barring the Ninth Circuit from issuing any further last-minute rulings in a death penalty case. The year I was fortunate enough to serve as a law clerk at the Supreme Court, 28 of 29 cases from the Ninth Circuit resulted in reversals. It is almost as if one could write a word processing macro — call it the [Alt-9] macro — which would automatically insert at the end of any opinion involving a case from the Ninth Circuit the following conclusion: "The opinion of the Ninth Circuit is reversed; the decision of the Court is unanimous."
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
It was the fifth time the Ninth Circuit had been reversed in a month. Seven of eight cases already decided by the high Court this year from the Ninth Circuit have been reversed, and six of those seven were by unanimous or nearly unanimous rulings. A few years ago, the Supreme Court even took the extraordinary step of issuing a special order barring the Ninth Circuit from issuing any further last-minute rulings in a death penalty case. The year I was fortunate enough to serve as a law clerk at the Supreme Court, 28 of 29 cases from the Ninth Circuit resulted in reversals. It is almost as if one could write a word processing macro — call it the [Alt-9] macro — which would automatically insert at the end of any opinion involving a case from the Ninth Circuit the following conclusion: "The opinion of the Ninth Circuit is reversed; the decision of the Court is unanimous."