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By Marshall Manson Posted in Roberts — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

“While questioning Judge Roberts, Sen. Feinstein stated that, in the last decade, the Supreme Court had struck down three dozen federal statutes under the Commerce Clause. In reality, U.S. v. Lopez (1995) and U.S. v. Morrison (2000) are the only two instances since the New Deal in which the Court invalidated legislation – involving the quintessentially local issues of gun possession near schools and gender-motivated violence respectively – on grounds that it was not a regulation of interstate commerce.

Sen. Feinstein is not alone. To hear Senators Kennedy, Schumer and their colleagues fret, you would think the Rehnquist Court had been striking down federal statutes under the Commerce Clause right and left. The truth is that the Court did so only when even a generous stretching of the constitutional authority to ‘regulate Commerce . . . among the several States’ could not accommodate the statute at issue.�

– Curt Levey, General Counsel, Committee for Justice