Tuesday, May 17, 2005

States Rights vs. Free Trade

I thought the Granhold v. Heald case was pretty interesting b/c Scalia and Thomas were on opposite sides of the opinion. You can say it came down to states rights vs interstate commerece, but I like to think free trade ideas influenced this decision. The federales don't want to get into the business of a national alcoholic beverage commission. Why would they want that headache when they already get tax revenue from the sale. To me it's about limiting free trade b/w the states. I don't look at all the Supreme Court decisions, so I don't know how unusual the composition of this 5-4 opinion is but it looks pretty weird to me. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Scalia, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. I think there are 2 dissenting opinions w/ Thomas writing one joined by O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Stevens, and Stevens writing one joined by O'Connor. I'm not 100% sure that there are 2 dissenting opinions but I paged through like 30 pages of this link and realized I wasn't a law scholar and should probably just wait for Dahlia Lithwick to let me know if that's the case. I definitely saw the 5-4 make-up on CNN. That's good enough for me. As for practical application of the law, I can use common sense and say checking ids over the internet can't be that hard. You enter a driver's license number and if the state is serious about not wanting underage drinking they can set up a way for the winery, brewery, or distillery to check that this purchaser is over 21. Maybe the shipment would have to go to the same address as the driver's license and if you could get some kind of credit card validation involved that's even better. In these tiered systems w/ retailers, wholesalers, and producers, you'll probably see either a new tier or adding out of state wineries to the producers category. Big deal. All I want to know is who am I supposed to call the activist judge? Scalia or Thomas?

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