Strict Constructionists vs Loose Constructionists

 The ink was hardly dry on the constitution before this argument got started, and it continues on even unto this day. The strict constructionists believe that the federal government can only do what the constitution says it can do, and the loose constructionists believe that the federal government can do anything that the constitution doesn't say it can't do. To me, the 10th Amendment clearly supports the strict constructionists, but a number of Supreme Court Justices have disagreed with my interpretation over the years. Judges! What do they know?

At the time the 18th amendment was passed, the strict constructionists must have been in power because they believed that, since the constitution did not specifically give the feds the authority to ban alcohol, it was necessary to amend the constitution before they could do it. The amendment itself was not the law, it gave the government the authority to pass the law: "The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." (Section 2) I'm not sure why it was deemed necessary to include the states in this at all since, as you said, Prohibition was almost exclusively enforced by the feds. I am guessing that, when the first drug laws were passed, the loose constructionists must have been in power, but there may be more to it than that.

The constitution gives the feds the authority to regulate interstate commerce, and that has been used to support many an argument over the years. You might think that, if you grow some pot on your balcony and sell it to your next door neighbor, you are not engaging in interstate commerce, but you probably are. Chances are that the seeds, the fertilizer, the pots, the potting soil, or the grow lights came from another state, and that can be construed to qualify your activity as interstate commerce. I think that's a bit of a stretch myself, but those nasty judges trump me again.

The trouble with having judges interpret the law is that, a few years later, a different judge can come along and reverse the previous judicial determination. We are supposed to have the rule of law in this country, not the rule of men but, if men can change the interpretation of the law at will, it seems to be little different than when kings made up the laws as they went along. Then again, what are we supposed to do when the laws are written in language that is incomprehensible to the average person?
Then again, the constitution is written in relatively plain English, and people have been arguing about what it means since the day after it was ratified. I have recently sent away for a book on this very subject, I'll let you know what I find out.

The thing about court room proceedings, is that we only get the highlights from our news sources. There are hours and hours of testimony that never make it to the six o'clock news, probably because it would bore the shit out of the viewers. What we need is for somebody to boil it all down and tell us the important parts that influenced the court's decision, leaving out all the "whereases and whyfors" that would put us to sleep, causing us to miss something relevant. Wiki is usually pretty good about that, so maybe that's where we should go for legal information.