States' Right to Initiative: Medicinal Marijuana
Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } Competition between state and federal government has been shaping American society for centuries. Interesting enough, the battle has recently set medical marijuana as the new battleground. California state law and Federal law collide in the 2005 Supreme Court case, Gonzales v. Raich , in which the court used the Commerce Clause to affirm federal authority. Much controversy and confusion has arisen from this decision, and my paper serves to analyze the reasoning behind the decision and its repercussions. I first explore the subject matter of this case, medical marijuana. After reviewing its medical history and consulting professional medical opinion, I establish and weigh the value of medical marijuana in contemporary society. I combine my findings with the legal analysis to show the circumstances surrounding Gonzales v. Raich in a new perspective. Using opinions ranging from the Supreme Court justices’ to law journal reviews, I decide whether the jurisprudence behind Raich was applied correctly. I hope my paper will not only detail the most recent controversy between state and federal government, but also examine an equally controversial subject, medical marijuana, as an example of the trends that exacerbate changes in the fabric of our society.
Gonzales V. Raich: Federalism as a Casualty of the War on Drugs
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Raich marks a watershed moment in the development of judicial federalism. If it has not quite put an end to the Rehnquist Court's "federalism revolution," it certainly represents a major step in that direction. In this Article, I contend that Raich represents a major - possibly even terminal - setback for efforts to impose meaningful judicial constraints on Congress' Commerce Clause powers. Raich undermines judicial enforcement of federalism in three interlocking ways: by adopting an essentially limitless definition of economic activity thereby ensuring that virtually any activity can be aggregated to produce the "substantial effect [on] interstate commerce" required to legitimate congressional regulation under United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison; by making it easier for Congress to impose controls on even non-economic activity by claiming that it is part of a broader regulatory scheme; and finally, by restoring the so-called rational basis test, holding that "[w]e need not determine whether [defendants'] activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a rational basis exists for so concluding." The Supreme Court's recent seemingly pro-federalism decisions in Gonzales v. Oregon and Rapanos v. Army Corps of Engineers actually do little or nothing to mitigate the impact of Raich. I also contend that the Raich decision is misguided on both textual and structural grounds. The text of the Constitution does not support the nearly unlimited congressional power endorsed in Raich. Such unlimited power also undercuts some of the major structural advantages of federalism, including diversity, the ability to "vote with your feet," and interstate competition for residents. Raich's undercutting of federalism by upholding the power of Congress to ban the possession of homegrown medical marijuana closely parallels legal developments during the Prohibition era of the 1920s. In both periods, the establishment of a nationwide prohibition regime greatly eroded decentralized federalism, in part because the Supreme Court accepted the government's claims that the power to regulate a market in prohibited substances necessarily required comprehensive regulation of virtually all sale or possession of the commodities in question. The future of judicial federalism may depend not just on the precise doctrinal impact of Raich, but on the possibility that liberal jurists and political activists may come to recognize that they have an interest in limiting congressional power. A cross-ideological coalition for judicial enforcement of federalism would be far more formidable than today's narrow alliance between some conservatives and libertarians. Ironically, the Raich decision, in combination with other recent developments, may help bring about such a result.
Photoreflectance characterization of vanadium-doped GaAs layers grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy
Abstract We characterized the vanadium-doped (GaAs:V) layers grown on GaAs substrate by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy. The conductivity of the samples is checked by the Hall effect measurements, and it is n type with electrons concentration ranging from 2×10 13 to 2×10 17  cm −3 . We used the photoreflectance technique (PR) to study the effect of vanadium doping on the optical properties of GaAs. Our experimental results show that the built-in electric field F and the broadening parameter Γ 0 increase with V-doping concentration. Furthermore, the temperature dependence of the built-in electric field and the broadening parameter of GaAs:V samples have been investigated by PR. It has been observed that these parameters increase with increasing temperature. The decrease of the built-in electric field with decreasing temperature is due to the photovoltage effect.We characterized the vanadium-doped GaAs (GaAs:V) layers grown on GaAs substrate by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy.