Marijuana, federalism, rhetoric.

I'm seeing a lot of articles like "Federalism, Up in Smoke?", responding to Monday's medical marijuana case (Raich). It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that those who wanted the case to go the other way are saying the Court has turned its back on a commitment it had made to enforcing federalism. But don't fall for the rhetoric. Those who don't like the Court's federalism cases have long exaggerated the extent of what they like to call the Court's "federalism revolution," giving those who have wanted the Court to do something quite significant in the name of federalism the ability to sound plausible if they scream betrayal whenever the Court sides with the federal government, which is very often. Excuse me if I view all of this with a jaundiced eye.

UPDATE: Let me be clear about why I linked to that old post of mine, which discusses the as-yet-undecided Oregon Death With Dignity case. It is for this passage:

[The NYT's Linda] Greenhouse (along with others) has written so many pieces decrying the Supreme Court's "federalism revolution"...

Don't believe it! The Supreme Court has upheld federal regulatory power quite consistently, and the deference it has shown to the states has only been in discrete areas. Congress's power to regulate all components of a national market -- such as the market in drugs -- is quite solidly established. It will be hard to find a way to back off from that. I support the Court's federalism decisions and I approve of allowing the states to experiment as Oregon has, but I don't see a good way, considering the precedents, to disempower the Attorney General in this decision about how the Controlled Substances Act ought to be enforced.

The federalism-enforcing cases have gotten a lot of press, and a lot of liberal commentators have tried to stir up alarm about how much had happened, but these cases never seriously undermined federal interests. The Court's federalism was always very tame. It only trimmed what was perceived as unimportant federal power around the edges. I could go on at length about this, as I have in scholarly articles, but really, if you actually thought the Court was seriously enforcing federalism, you were believing the spin. Conservatives were doing some similar spin, characterizing the Court as committed to something in the hope that it would demonstrate some serious commitment in the future, but, believe me, the commitment to federal interests was always there. And the federal government is unquestionably committed to drug enforcement.

UPDATE: Here's the Wall Street Journal's contribution to the genre.