The Supreme Court upheld the Oregon assisted suicide law by a 6-3 vote. (PDF of Scalia’s Dissent in which Roberts joined) The minority asserted that federal drug laws override the democratic will of the people of Oregon as expressed by the Oregon legislature. So much for state’s rights.
What is stunningly hypocritical about the minority’s position is that these same justices have routinely invalidated the application of federal statutes to state governments under the guise of the chimerical doctrine of sovereign immunity. What is the difference in this case? Why do federal statutes invalidate the sovereign expression of the people’s will, but fail to constrain the choices and practices of state bureaucracies? The so-called ‘conservatives’ on the Court would give you an answer the average citizen couldn’t make any sense out of, and only a small fraction of lawyers could explain sensibly. But the real answer is that their master in the Oval Office would have it so. These justices worship at the altar of the Imperial Presidency, unconstrained in his power even by the Constitution.
Roberts has shown his true colors, and it is not Republican red; it is lick-spittle brown.