SCOTUS issues what may be a huge biggie

[Waitone]

Only time will tell how big this decision was.

http://deadlinelive.info/2011/06/18/groundbreaking-us-supreme-court-decision-on-the-tenth-and-ninth-amendment/

I can't say it any more succinctly 

The Court unanimously held that not just states but individuals have standing to challenge federal laws as violations of state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment.

Immediate applications come to mind include:
--Challenge to Obamacare
--Virtually any environmental law or regulation
--Gun laws out the ying-yang
--Any law using the commerce clause as justification
--Laws and regulations using international NGO as basis
--Treaties implemented as agreements

We'll have to wait a few days to hear the verdict of the punditry.  Mark Levin will be an interesting listen this week.

http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=14350782&msgid=139912&act=XSOF&c=746222&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourt.gov%2Fopinions%2F10pdf%2F09-1227.pdf

[MechAg94]

Looks interesting.  I agree that it might not be apparent what implications this will have.

[TommyGunn]

Wow.  A whole new encyclopedia of jurisprudence may have just been created. 
I see this as possibly a good thing. 
But, like  MechAg94 I remain uncertain of just what it really implies......

[gunsmith]

AWESOME!! at least I think so, gun free school zones, moar machine guns...

The liberal side of the bench gave us a victory? wait, maybe we should view this with skepticism

[RoadKingLarry]

I'm thinking this will add a suffocating backlog to the appeals process.

[HankB]

At first glance, this looks like a GREAT decision - unanimous, no less!

BUT . . . I hope we don't get a flurry of ill-conceived and poorly prepared suits which will result in bad precedents . . .

[AZRedhawk44]

BUT . . . I hope we don't get a flurry of ill-conceived and poorly prepared suits which will result in bad precedents . . .

^^^ this.

One fear I have is of Joe Sixpack going after some piece of USC, with a warchest of about $10k, while FedGov preserves their policies with an unlimited budget.

The other fear I have is of Brady/HCI (or some similar group on a different issue) deliberately setting up or funding a patsy case and botching it as best they can on purpose, to set irrevocable precedents.

[birdman]

^^^ this.

One fear I have is of Joe Sixpack going after some piece of USC, with a warchest of about $10k, while FedGov preserves their policies with an unlimited budget.

The other fear I have is of Brady/HCI (or some similar group on a different issue) deliberately setting up or funding a patsy case and botching it as best they can on purpose, to set irrevocable precedents.

Precedents get changed all the time... Unfortunately, they rarely get overturned in good (from a liberty perspective) directions (excepting of course civil rights)...and precedents are NOT law, yet too many liberals view them (and the associated judicial activism) as the equivalent of laws. 

[230RN]

Huh.

<drums fingers on table, wondering how many of those "incorporations" might be challenged by implementing this decision>

Huh.

<scratches head, wondering if the liberals in the Court might have had something else in mind>

Huh.

<rubs chin, trying to decide if rubbee is just a paranoid old coot>

Hmmmm....

<clicks out of thread to await further analysis by others more sophisticated and less suspicionoid>

[Balog]

I find it difficult to believe this Court would rule so strongly in favour of State's Rights. I'm wondering what they are playing at?

[kgbsquirrel]

Could this possibly lead to a revival of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act? As I recall, the lower courts kept throwing that one out because of lack of standing/damages or some such.

[TechMan]

Add me to the list of suspicious as well.

I found this on SCOTUSblog. http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/bond-v-united-states/


http://www.scotusblog.com/?p=122251

If you thought J.D.B. and Davis involved interesting facts, you ain’t seen nothing yet. United States v. Bond takes the cake.  When Carol Anne Bond found out her best friend was pregnant, she was overjoyed.  When she discovered her husband was the one who got her best friend  pregnant, she was out for revenge.  Bond placed hazardous chemicals on the homewrecker’s mailbox, car door handles and the like, hoping to injure her now-former friend.  All the ex-friend got was a minor burn.  Here’s where it gets interesting, legally:  Bond was not prosecuted under ordinary state laws, for assault or attempted manslaughter charge.  Instead, the federal government charged her with violating a law that was passed under an international treaty banning the use of chemical weapons.

Does that make sense to you?  Well, it didn’t to Carol Anne Bond, either.  She argued that she couldn’t be charged with federal crimes because her crimes were the kind of crimes that states should prosecute.  Put into constitutional terms, her argument was that when Congress passed the law, it intruded on the rights that the Constitution, in the Tenth Amendment, leaves for the states.  The court of appeals ruled against her, holding that she didn’t even have the legal right (which we call “standing”) to bring the claim, because only a state could argue that Congress had infringed upon state power.  At the Supreme Court, Bond got some help from an unexpected source:  the federal government, which agreed with her that she had the right to challenge the law – a procedure that is known as “confessing error,” or admitting that you are wrong.  So the Court appointed an attorney (in this case, as it usually does, it chose a former Supreme Court clerk) to argue that the Third Circuit had been correct.

On Thursday, the Court unanimously agreed with Bond and the government that she did have “standing” to argue that the federal government had gone too far.  The Court pointed out that the right Bond seeks to vindicate is her own, because she benefits from a federalist (states’ rights) system.  But here too, Bond’s victory was only the first step in the process of being vindicated:  now she must return to the lower courts and convince them that the federal statute does indeed violate the Tenth Amendment.

[Waitone]

Here is an opinion piece on how it may be used.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/did_the_supreme_court_tip_its_hand_on_obamacare.html