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Supreme Court Allows Direct Shipment of Wine
jrrl writes "For a while now, ordering wine (of the alcoholic variety, not the almost 0.9 variety) online has been a somewhat dicey proposition in some states. But today, the Supreme Court overturned state laws that disallowed direct shipment of wine from out of state. Their reasoning is that the states' 'authority to regulate the sale of alcohol within their borders' under the 21st Amendment does not supersede 'the Constitution's ban on state discrimination against interstate commerce.' States could still disallow all direct shipments, but at least they have to be evenhanded now."
I don't get why it even matters. I mean, why should wine be any different than computer equipment, condoms, flowers or pepperidge farms gift baskets? Why should any of them be restricted (or for that matter, why shouldn't ALL of them be restricted).
It doesn't matter, and that's the point that the Supreme Court just hammered home. The real essence of this is that a state can do a lot of things to regulate what (and how) things can be sold in their state, but they can't do so in a way that discriminates against people in other states (people, in this case, being winemakers selling across the border). So, you can let everyone sell wine, or no one. But the patchwork of crazy regulations was definately restricting commerce in an asymmetrical (and unconstitutional) way.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is still a very usual split, but overall, the political nature of the court is exaggerated. When I last saw stats (several years ago), any pairwise comparison of the justices found them in agreement at least 60% of the time.
... I will, on stare decisis grounds, enforce a self executing "negative" Commerce Clause in two situations: (1) against a state law that facially discriminates against interstate commerce, and (2) against a state law that is indistinguishable from a type of law previously held unconstitutional by this Court.
m e_court_s.html)
That said, this particular 5-4 split has not happened in the past ten years
However, within 5-4 decisions, Stevens and Thomas agree about 16 percent of the time.
Scalia was clearly the swing-vote on this case
"Although Scalia is no fan of the dormant commerce clause, he has written that:
Since the state laws in question here demonstrably fell into the former category, and we can infer that Scalia was not persuaded by Thomas' account of the 21st amendment, stare decisis required him to vote to strike down these laws." (http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2005/05/supre