Poll coming.

IBTP, and that's like asking what my favorite piece of sand on the beach is.

The one they havent made that would secure our RKBA until the earth explodes.

instead of other I should have put that recent case that ruined private property rights. argh.

are there any that are less worse than the others?

My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona

Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona

Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality.

This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America.

US v Miller should be used today to get us all M16's.

The argument was that the 2nd Amendment provided for the right to bear arms
of a kind suitable for military service.   The court held that a sawed off 12 guage
was not appropriate.

So, where is my M4?    

I'm bad with case names, but the worst one was the case about the wheat that expanded the federal government's power through an incredibly broad interpretation of the commerce clause of the consititution.

How about the recent SCOTUS decision that permitted localities to seize private land and then turn it over to developers?

Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America.

So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS?

Kinda like asking which pinapple you want shoved up your butt.

The most recent review has been with the U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) case. The Court in Miller, with a decision authored by Justice McReynolds, held that an individual had no right to possess a sawed of shotgun . At the time, there was no showing or judicial notice that the sawed-off shotgun had any relation to the upkeep of the militia.  This decision has been cited by many courts to hold that the second amendment confers a collective right and the right to bear arms is linked to the military service on behalf of the state. While seemingly at odds with the language of the amendment itself, this decision has not been reviewed to this day. However, modern scholarship has placed into question both the scholarship of the decision as well as the actual procedural due process legitimacy of the Miller case. A good argument can be made that Miller should be overturned and the Second amendment considered anew.  

The procedural foundation of Miller is suspect due to a number of factors. First, Jack Miller, the defendant, filed no brief nor sent any counsel for the argument. The reason behind this peculiar occurrence is that Jack Miller’s counsel Paul Gutensohn could not be found until approximately two weeks prior to oral arguments. Gutensohn had represented Miller as his unpaid trial counsel in the district court. Gutensohn responded a week afterward that he could not argue the case and that the “case be submitted on appellants brief.”  Gutensohn never received a copy of the record or the brief of the government. Today, any such case would be suspect due to the limited notice and lack of record. Furthermore, the court at the time existed in an odd manner where unanimity was sought on all decisions  .  In addition, the court had a docket with 30 cases that had to be decided prior to the end of the term.  Justice McReynolds took no judicial notice nor did he attempt to perform any research to determine the validity of the government’s claims against the non-existent defendant.

The Miller decision is not only weak on its procedural basis but its precedent has been greatly distorted. As Brannon P. Denning comments in his law review article, the Miller holding has had intent elements added while the original militia relationship test been discarded . Finally, a standing element has been added in some circuits making an individual claim by a non-state actor impossible.  In Cases v. United States, the court seemingly rejected out of hand the entire Miller test. The Court stated:

The rule which [Miller] laid down was adequate to dispose of the case before it and that we think was as far as the Supreme Court intended to go. At any rate the rule of the Miller case, if intended to be comprehensive and complete would seem to be already outdated, in spite of the fact that it was formulated only three and a half years ago, because of the well know fact that in the so called 'Commando Units' some sort of military use seems to have been found for almost any modern lethal weapon. In view of this, if the rule of the Miller case is general and complete, the result would follow that, under present day conditions, the federal government would be empowered only to regulate the possession or use of weapons such as a flintlock musket or a matchlock harquebus. But to hold that the Second Amendment limits the federal government to regulations concerning only weapons which can be classed as antiques or curiosities,-- almost any other might bear some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia unit of the present day,-- is in effect to hold that the limitation of the Second Amendment is absolute.

It seems that without citation or research the court disbelieves that the Miller test could possibly mean what it actually states. The court subsequently created a new intent test as it stated “there is no evidence that the appellant was or ever had been a member of any military organization or that his use of the weapon under the circumstances disclosed was in preparation for a military career.”  

This intent element was added to a collective rights theory by Tot v. United States.  The Tot court dealt with the second amendment just as curtly as the Cases court, in two paragraphs . The court held that there was no common law tradition allowing individuals to carry weapons and cited the Statute of Northampton, enacted by Richard III, which stated that arms carrying was prohibited.  The Tot court analyzed historical material more so than Cases but still did not cite to any contradictory historical evidence. For example the Court did not consider that the Statute of Northampton was considered “desuetinem” or that the statue had lost effect due to disuse in one of the few recorded prosecutions under it. The King’s Bench denied a conviction and held that the statue was overbroad and the prohibition on carrying or arms was not as severe as the plain language of the statute held. The irony of the holding is that the Tot court simply cannot believe the natural language of the Miller court and relies upon a historical precedent where a court  applies a similar but opposite approach to the case and statute before it.  

Finally, with an intent element and a collective rights element already in place the 9th Circuit denied that individuals had standing at all in Hickman v. Block  . Holding that “the Second Amendment is a right held by the states, and does not protect the possession of a weapon by a private citizen. We concluded that Hickman can show no legal injury, and therefore lacks standing to bring this action.”  

In this manner, Courts have taken the first federal gun control laws such as the National Firearms Act, initially passed under the governments taxing authority to pass judicial muster, and stripped citizens of the right to bear arms.

Miller and Presser and Cruishank form the backbone of the federal and state firearms control statutes. However, in light on modern scholarship and the last 130 years of jurisprudence the validity of the earlier cases must be examined. Furthermore, the Miller decision itself has been so distorted by lower courts as to be virtually unrecognizable. In essence, any holding today that does not view the second amendment as a fundamental individual right is based on outdated, faulty or misapplied precedent.


Enjoy!

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS?

I believe it was supposed to have been "We the people..."

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS? I believe it was supposed to have been "We the people..."

Oh, I see.  Each of undividually is supposed to decide what is Constitutional?  That's a recipe for anarchy.  

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS? I believe it was supposed to have been "We the people..." Oh, I see.  Each of undividually is supposed to decide what is Constitutional?  That's a recipe for anarchy.

People cant even decide on whether or not to have steak or chicken for supper.

And now, you want 257million morons to decide what IS or ISNT constitutional?

Quoted: Kinda like asking which pinapple you want shoved up your butt.

-Ben

Without a doubt it was Garner vs Tn. This limited shooting fleeing felons and opened to door to the bad guys having the advantage on the street and the civil court room.

Katzenbach v. McClung  (Not in the result, per se, but in how it got there... )

Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong.

No ruling could more in opposition to the fundamental, overriding values of America than one that furthered the notion that people can be property.

There was a supreme court decision that said you could own people (The Dredd Scott decision) and you guys choose US v. Miller?  Something wrong about that

Quoted: There was a supreme court decision that said you could own people (The Dredd Scott decision) and you guys choose US v. Miller?  Something wrong about that

Well, the ruling was based on established law.  Ruling otherwise would have made them activist judges.  

Marbury vs. Madison

Being the unwilling subject of 9 appointed for life professional lawyers is not my idea of a "good thing".

Quoted: Quoted: There was a supreme court decision that said you could own people (The Dredd Scott decision) and you guys choose US v. Miller?  Something wrong about that Well, the ruling was based on established law.  Ruling otherwise would have made them activist judges.

Hmmm, I didn't see a color/race clause in the Constitution exempting specific ethnic origins from personhood or protection of liberty unless I skipped past it.

Quoted: Quoted: Well, the ruling was based on established law.  Ruling otherwise would have made them activist judges.   Hmmm, I didn't see a color/race clause in the Constitution exempting specific ethnic origins from personhood or protection of liberty unless I skipped past it.

I'm no historian, but I believe the established positions were that only citizens had the rights in the Constitution, and slaves weren't citizens.  I could be wrong though.

Quoted: ... Hmmm, I didn't see a color/race clause in the Constitution exempting specific ethnic origins from personhood or protection of liberty unless I skipped past it.

It isn't there anymore, but...

Snipped from www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html because I am neither a Constitutional scholar nor historian : ... Slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on its population - in that population, slaves, called "other persons," are counted as three-fifths of a whole person. This compromise was hard-fought, with Northerners wishing that slaves, legally property, but uncounted, much as mules and horses are uncounted. Southerners, however, well aware of the high proportion of slaves to the total population in their states, wanted them counted as whole persons despite their legal status. The three-fifths number was a ratio used by the Congress in contemporary legislation and was agreed upon with little debate. In Article 1, Section 9, Congress is limited, expressly, from prohibiting the "Importation" of slaves, before 1808. The slave trade was a bone of contention for many, with some who supported slavery abhorring the slave trade. The 1808 date, a compromise of 20 years, allowed the slave trade to continue, but placed a date-certain on its survival. Congress eventually passed a law outlawing the slave trade that became effective on January 1, 1808. The Fugitive Slave Clause is the last mention. In it, a problem that slave states had with extradition of escaped slaves was resolved. The laws of one state, the clause says, cannot excuse a person from "Service or Labour" in another state. The clause expressly requires that the state in which an escapee is found deliver the slave to the state he escaped from "on Claim of the Party." ...

Dred Scott was the worst decision ever and on top of that it found one of the fundamental rights of a citizen to be that of bearing arms.  If decided correctly, we wouldn't een be havinga  gun control debate today because the individual right would have been gauranteed.

The Court after the civil war was not much better and consistently ruled against individual rights.
for example the first amendment was held invalid against state authority.

Selective incorporation began 20 years later.

Dred SCott was the worst decision in US history, hands down.

Ironically, the Dred Scott opinion actually lists the right to bear arms as an individual right.

Quoted: Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America.

+1

Quoted: Quoted: ... Hmmm, I didn't see a color/race clause in the Constitution exempting specific ethnic origins from personhood or protection of liberty unless I skipped past it. It isn't there anymore, but... Snipped from www.usconstitution.net/consttop_slav.html because I am neither a Constitutional scholar nor historian : ... Slavery is seen in the Constitution in a few key places. The first is in the Enumeration Clause, where representatives are apportioned. Each state is given a number of representatives based on its population - in that population, slaves, called "other persons," are counted as three-fifths of a whole person. This compromise was hard-fought, with Northerners wishing that slaves, legally property, but uncounted, much as mules and horses are uncounted. Southerners, however, well aware of the high proportion of slaves to the total population in their states, wanted them counted as whole persons despite their legal status. The three-fifths number was a ratio used by the Congress in contemporary legislation and was agreed upon with little debate. In Article 1, Section 9, Congress is limited, expressly, from prohibiting the "Importation" of slaves, before 1808. The slave trade was a bone of contention for many, with some who supported slavery abhorring the slave trade. The 1808 date, a compromise of 20 years, allowed the slave trade to continue, but placed a date-certain on its survival. Congress eventually passed a law outlawing the slave trade that became effective on January 1, 1808. The Fugitive Slave Clause is the last mention. In it, a problem that slave states had with extradition of escaped slaves was resolved. The laws of one state, the clause says, cannot excuse a person from "Service or Labour" in another state. The clause expressly requires that the state in which an escapee is found deliver the slave to the state he escaped from "on Claim of the Party." ...

Well.... damn.  Didn't know about that one.

Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong. No ruling could more in opposition to the fundamental, overriding values of America than one that furthered the notion that people can be property.

I agree.  The recent land taking case just came to mind because of it's recency.

Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong.

Dred Scott was correct decision. At the time, slavery was constitutionally authorized, and the Dred Scott decision was in line with it. Anything else would have been a extreme form of "judicial activism". The error was in the initial premise that humans could be property, and the writing of this premise into the Constitution in the first place.

Quoted: Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong. Dred Scott was correct decision. At the time, slavery was constitutionally authorized, and the Dred Scott decision was in line with it. Anything else would have been a extreme form of "judicial activism". The error was in the initial premise that humans could be property, and the writing of this premise into the Constitution in the first place.

Where in the Constitution was slavery authorized?  The fact is that the institution of slavery  was always inconsistent with the Constitution and permitting slavery under the guise that some people were mere property was intellectually dishonest.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong. Dred Scott was correct decision. At the time, slavery was constitutionally authorized, and the Dred Scott decision was in line with it. Anything else would have been a extreme form of "judicial activism". The error was in the initial premise that humans could be property, and the writing of this premise into the Constitution in the first place. Where in the Constitution was slavery authorized?  The fact is that the institution of slavery  was always inconsistent with the Constitution and permitting slavery under the guise that some people were mere property was intellectually dishonest.

Well.  If the constitution offically recognized a person purchased as a slave as "property" then it's hard to argue they are also a citizen.     My (perhaps clueless) guess is that if they recognized a slave as property they felt no need to carve out an exception to the BoR for a group that had no rights as property in the first place.  In my view though it's fiction to argue that in the face of a document declaring rights based on the natural rights of man, that you can also claim that a man can be property.  I think in this case the Constitution was at odds with itself.

I don't know them by case, but I'd say it was when the court rolled over and allowed FDR to do the New Deal.

Quoted: Where in the Constitution was slavery authorized?  The fact is that the institution of slavery  was always inconsistent with the Constitution and permitting slavery under the guise that some people were mere property was intellectually dishonest.

Did you miss what I posted (and Grunteled quoted)?

In the original, ratified text of the US Constitution, slaves were counted as 3/5 of a free man; Congress was forbidden to prohibit slave importation for at least 20 years; and  "free" states were expressly required to return fugitive slaves.  

Express authorization of slavery?  Maybe not.  Tacit approval and official facilitation?  In the very least.

Yes, it is a very ugly black eye in this nation's (and my beloved South's) history - but pretending it never happened solves nothing IMO.

Texas v. White

(edited due to brain fart)

Quoted: I'm bad with case names, but the worst one was the case about the wheat that expanded the federal government's power through an incredibly broad interpretation of the commerce clause of the consititution.

That wasn't the worst on that score. At least that decision allowed farmers to grow some wheat for their own personal use, free from Federal Government interference. (The reason they ruled against that particular guy was that the amount he was growing was obviously far too much for his personal use. A lower amount would have been OK.)

The recent medical marijuana case Raich v. Gonzales, expanded that to say that there was NO amount of something that you could grow privately that would be free from Federal regulation. If you hated Wickard, then the medical marijuana case was far worse.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong. Dred Scott was correct decision. At the time, slavery was constitutionally authorized, and the Dred Scott decision was in line with it. Anything else would have been a extreme form of "judicial activism". The error was in the initial premise that humans could be property, and the writing of this premise into the Constitution in the first place. Where in the Constitution was slavery authorized?  The fact is that the institution of slavery  was always inconsistent with the Constitution and permitting slavery under the guise that some people were mere property was intellectually dishonest. Well.  If the constitution offically recognized a person purchased as a slave as "property" then it's hard to argue they are also a citizen.     My (perhaps clueless) guess is that if they recognized a slave as property they felt no need to carve out an exception to the BoR for a group that had no rights as property in the first place.  In my view though it's fiction to argue that in the face of a document declaring rights based on the natural rights of man, that you can also claim that a man can be property.  I think in this case the Constitution was at odds with itself.

the constitution does not mention slaves specifically, but it obviously considered "other persons" and "Persons held to Service" to less than real people.

It says:

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

<snip>

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

<snip>
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

Plessy v. Ferguson is considered one of the worst decisions of the court.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS?

The Supreme Court was set up to rule on LAW.  Laws in our country (according to the plan of our forefathers) were to be made by the legislature.  Only Marbury v. Madison has the Supreme Court slowly but surely become truly proactive and has started "interpreting" laws in a manner that is in line with political agendas.

Think about it.  Originally, senate members were to be picked by the governors of each state, while representatives were to be elected by the general populous.  Should a law be found to be "unfair" or inapplicable due to changing social views, it was up to the legislature to rewrite them, not for the Supreme Cour to reinterpret them.

So, in a way, yes "we the people..."  are to be through our elections.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS? The Supreme Court was set up to rule on LAW.  Laws in our country (according to the plan of our forefathers) were to be made by the legislature.  Only Marbury v. Madison has the Supreme Court slowly but surely become truly proactive and has started "interpreting" laws in a manner that is in line with political agendas. Think about it.  Originally, senate members were to be picked by the governors of each state, while representatives were to be elected by the general populous.  Should a law be found to be "unfair" or inapplicable due to changing social views, it was up to the legislature to rewrite them, not for the Supreme Cour to reinterpret them. So, in a way, yes "we the people..."  are to be through our elections.

But what if those laws passed by the legislature conflict with the Constitution?  Who then is to decide the issue with any force?

I cant belive someone here said the miranda case! WTF?! Oh yeah being made aware of the rights you already have, what a fucking crime! Especially since without that warning cops would pull all kinds of lies and deceptions and shit to get a collar. Move back to russia opps i mean Iran now.

I think you have to ask what you mean by "worst".

If you mean "worst" in the sense of denying humanity, even though it may have been in concert with existing law, then Dredd Scott wins.

If you mean "worst" in terms of unlimited expansion of Federal power over private citizens then the Raich case (the most recent medical marijuana case) takes that prize. While previous rulings may have expanded Federal power, the Raich case took the limits off entirely. You can't wipe your ass with your own homegrown lettuce without being subject to Federal law now.

Note that eleven state Attorney Generals wrote amicus briefs to the USSC in support of states' rights on medical marijuana -- and most of them were from states where medical marijuana is illegal and the AGs themselves are on record in opposition to medical marijuana. That's pretty extraordinary.

Quoted: I cant belive someone here said the miranda case! WTF?! Oh yeah being made aware of the rights you already have, what a fucking crime! Especially since without that warning cops would pull all kinds of lies and deceptions and shit to get a collar. Move back to russia opps i mean Iran now.

As some will undoubtedly tell you here, if you got rousted by the cops then you must have done something wrong and you deserved whatever you got. If you polled them, you would probably find that most are Republicans who would otherwise tell you they believe in limited government and personal freedom.

Quoted: I'm bad with case names, but the worst one was the case about the wheat that expanded the federal government's power through an incredibly broad interpretation of the commerce clause of the consititution.

It's very amusing.

Clement tells O'Connor that those federalism cases can be distinguished from the marijuana one, but O'Connor shoots back with a question about Wickard v. Filburn, the classic commerce-clause case from 1942. Wickard involved a farmer who owned a family dairy farm and exceeded the annual wheat quota then allowed by the federal government. The farmer argued that his wheat was for his own consumption and that Congress had exceeded its commerce-clause powers in setting quotas. The Supreme Court disagreed. O'Connor points out that the wheat grown in Wickard entered a national market. Whereas pot grown on a windowsill by dying women or their caregivers does not. Or, to quote Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "Nobody's buying anything. Nobody's selling anything."   THE NEW DEFINITION OF COMMERCE.....

Quoted: Quoted: I'm bad with case names, but the worst one was the case about the wheat that expanded the federal government's power through an incredibly broad interpretation of the commerce clause of the consititution. It's very amusing. Clement tells O'Connor that those federalism cases can be distinguished from the marijuana one, but O'Connor shoots back with a question about Wickard v. Filburn, the classic commerce-clause case from 1942. Wickard involved a farmer who owned a family dairy farm and exceeded the annual wheat quota then allowed by the federal government. The farmer argued that his wheat was for his own consumption and that Congress had exceeded its commerce-clause powers in setting quotas. The Supreme Court disagreed. O'Connor points out that the wheat grown in Wickard entered a national market. Whereas pot grown on a windowsill by dying women or their caregivers does not. Or, to quote Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "Nobody's buying anything. Nobody's selling anything."   THE NEW DEFINITION OF COMMERCE.....

Good one nightstalker, but Wickard had an additional element that Raiche did not. In Wickard there was a national wheat purchasing program set up and therefore individual consumption could affect the overall efficacy of the plan. Specifically, the wheat was intended to be transported across state lines and private unregulated consumption had an impact, however small, on the transportation. In Raiche, there was a prohibition of the transport of the good, theorhetically it could never enter teh stream of commerce. Yes, it could effect the illegal market, but that is wholly seperate from the regulated market. Thats where Raiche overstepped its bounds.

Wickard gets us involved in much more fundamental questions of the role of the state in teh economy and such.  I don't even want to get involved in discussing it.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: are there any that are less worse than the others? My vote is for Miranda vs. Arizona Yep.  Marbury v. Madison essentially established the Supreme Court as THE final arbiter concerning law, specifically re: Constitutionality. This vote effectively established and guaranteed a nine person lordship over the lands of America. So who is supposed to be the final arbiter of the Constitution if not SCOTUS? The Supreme Court was set up to rule on LAW.  Laws in our country (according to the plan of our forefathers) were to be made by the legislature.  Only Marbury v. Madison has the Supreme Court slowly but surely become truly proactive and has started "interpreting" laws in a manner that is in line with political agendas. Think about it.  Originally, senate members were to be picked by the governors of each state, while representatives were to be elected by the general populous.  Should a law be found to be "unfair" or inapplicable due to changing social views, it was up to the legislature to rewrite them, not for the Supreme Cour to reinterpret them. So, in a way, yes "we the people..."  are to be through our elections. But what if those laws passed by the legislature conflict with the Constitution?  Who then is to decide the issue with any force?

The Supreme Court would, but, realize that if construed strictly whereby the Government has limited powers and the states have (as we would now view it) unprecedented power to regulate within their own boundaries, there would be so few decisions to be made regarding the Constitutionality of laws passed.  As originally constituted it was to be a "final" appeal court (yep, for everybody and for issues between the states) applying the rule of law.  

There would be fewer laws passed on the federal level, notwithstanding the proposition that those that were passed would be limited in what they could affect.  The federal government has garnered most of its "modern" powers from the various "interpretations" of the Constitution.  Think of how much power was seized when the Supreme Court starting finding pnumbras and inferred powers.  It has sometimes worked to our favor, but mostly we have been screwed.

When looking at which of the above cases were worst, I would have to stick by Marbury v. Madison.  No other case (considering what was at stake and the circumstances surrounding the decision) has had such an impact upon our system of government.  It is arguably possible that without it, none of the other cases could have made it to the Supreme Court.

Quoted: How about the recent SCOTUS decision that permitted localities to seize private land and then turn it over to developers?

x 1,000,000

Quoted: Quoted: Anyone that didn't vote for Dred Scott is wrong. Dred Scott was correct decision. At the time, slavery was constitutionally authorized, and the Dred Scott decision was in line with it. Anything else would have been a extreme form of "judicial activism". The error was in the initial premise that humans could be property, and the writing of this premise into the Constitution in the first place.

Did you ever read Dred Scott? It was NOT correctly decided. It was a horrendous decision that flew in the face of a host of facts. The decision was the first application of substantive due process, a pernicious doctrine that lives on in most judicial activist decisions.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I'm bad with case names, but the worst one was the case about the wheat that expanded the federal government's power through an incredibly broad interpretation of the commerce clause of the consititution. It's very amusing. Clement tells O'Connor that those federalism cases can be distinguished from the marijuana one, but O'Connor shoots back with a question about Wickard v. Filburn, the classic commerce-clause case from 1942. Wickard involved a farmer who owned a family dairy farm and exceeded the annual wheat quota then allowed by the federal government. The farmer argued that his wheat was for his own consumption and that Congress had exceeded its commerce-clause powers in setting quotas. The Supreme Court disagreed. O'Connor points out that the wheat grown in Wickard entered a national market. Whereas pot grown on a windowsill by dying women or their caregivers does not. Or, to quote Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "Nobody's buying anything. Nobody's selling anything."   THE NEW DEFINITION OF COMMERCE..... Good one nightstalker, but Wickard had an additional element that Raiche did not. In Wickard there was a national wheat purchasing program set up and therefore individual consumption could affect the overall efficacy of the plan. Specifically, the wheat was intended to be transported across state lines and private unregulated consumption had an impact, however small, on the transportation. In Raiche, there was a prohibition of the transport of the good, theorhetically it could never enter teh stream of commerce. Yes, it could effect the illegal market, but that is wholly seperate from the regulated market. Thats where Raiche overstepped its bounds.

No, another major difference was the quantity involved. The Wickard case involved 239 bushels. Angel Raich's case originally arose from the seizure of just 6 plants. In the Wickard case, the USSC said the effect on interstate commerce had to be "substantial". Ordinary farmers who grew smaller amounts -- and whose use was genuinely "personal" -- were not so affected. Raich removed any of the limits. No amount is too small and Congress only has to assert that there is some interstate impact, however small it might be.

Wickard gets us involved in much more fundamental questions of the role of the state in teh economy and such.  I don't even want to get involved in discussing it.

I think it comes down to whether you think the Federal Government has a legitimate interest in regulating every single plant in your yard, regardless of whether it never left your yard. For me, that one is a no-brainer.

It is mind-boggling to see the number of "limited government" "conservative Republicans" who think the decision was correct. But that's probably just because it is marijuana, not wheat. Lots of people think that the Constitution can go out the window when their favorite social paranoia is involved. It happens with guns, it happens with drugs, etc.