Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Notable lengthy dissent about Commerce Clause after denial of cert in criminal case

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this new post by Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog, two Justices "in a dissent that may reveal a new division in the Court over Congress?s power to pass legislation under the Commerce Clause, on Monday accused the Court majority of silently accepting 'the nullification' of the Court?s recent rulings on that power."  Astute Court watchers will surely not be surprised to learn that it is Justices Scalia and Thomas who lodge this dissent. Justice Thomas is the one who took pen to paper in this eight-page dissent in Alderman v. US, a case in which the defendant challenged a federal law which makes it a crime for a convicted felon to possess a bulletproof vest or other body armor that had traveled across state lines.  Justice Thomas's dissent begins and ends with these paragraphs: Today the Court tacitly accepts the nullification of our recent Commerce Clause jurisprudence...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on January 10, 2011 (boomark / email).