The New New Federalism (Liberals discover states' rights.)

From OpinionJournal.com:

The John Roberts era began this week at the Supreme Court, and one of the first cases on the docket stands to tell us a good deal about the new Chief Justice's view on federal power. On Wednesday the Court heard oral arguments in Gonzales v. Oregon, in which the Justice Department is challenging Oregon's so-called assisted-suicide law, using the federal Controlled Substances Act as a club.

The Oregon case will be an early test of whether the Roberts Court will continue and extend William Rehnquist's legacy of restoring meaning and force to the notion that our system of government is one of limited and enumerated powers. For at bottom, the Oregon case turns on whether the Attorney General can, by an act of administrative fiat, nullify the expressed will of a majority of voters of one of the 50 United States.

The case dates from 2001, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft asserted the authority under the Controlled Substances Act to bar doctors from prescribing the lethal dose of barbiturates that, under the Oregon law, terminally-ill patients are allowed to use to end their own lives.

It's clear the Controlled Substances Act gives the federal government the power to regulate, bar or restrict drug availability, up to a point. The question in Gonzales is whether the AG can use that power to accomplish a quite different public-policy goal--the neutering of Oregon's assisted-suicide law--simply by asserting that taking drugs to end one's life is not a "legitimate medical purpose" for a barbiturate. That law, we should add, was twice endorsed by Oregon voters in statewide referendums.

In other words, this is a states' rights case, but with an ironic twist. States' rights has generally been considered a "conservative" issue. But in this case, as in the Raich medical marijuana case the Court decided in June, the rights in question are a state's desire to pursue what are generally regarded as liberal social policies.