(5) I was both amused and angered by Justice Stevens’s paean to the democratic process as the appropriate avenue of relief for advocates of medical marijuana at the end of his opinion. Every Justice who joined Stevens’s opinion voted to prohibit states from regulating homosexual sex in Lawrence and [if they were on the Court at the time] voted to limit the government’s power to regulate abortion in Casey. Why was the democratic process not the appropriate avenue of relief for the victims of overzealous government regulation in those cases? It seems we do to some extent live under a system where the personal preferences of the Justices, having nothing to do with the history, text, or logic of the Constitution, dictate when the Supreme Court will or will not intervene to overturn particular regulations.
-David Bernstein, commenting on the Supreme Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. Raich.
Call me Virginia, but I’m always shocked when it happens (again and again) that judical actions indicate how much we are ruled by men and not by laws.
And not only that but the people of California had already spoken democratically. Stevens was just mocking them. there is no democracy as long as we are ruled by the members of the canasta and knitting circle of the world’s crankiest old folks home.