David N. Mayer

June 2005 issue -- Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s announcement of her retirement from the Supreme Court took by surprise most Court-watchers, who expected Chief Justice William Rehnquist to be the first justice to retire during George W. Bush’s presidency.

June 2005 -- In the medical-marijuana case Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled (on June 6, 2005) six to three that federal laws criminalizing drug possession applied even to persons using homegrown marijuana, or cannabis, for medicinal purposes under sanction of state law. Although the case may seem to involve issues of personal liberty, it really involved a question about federal power—the scope of Congress’s power under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

"When forced to assume [self-government], we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established, however, some, although not all its important principles."
                               --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.