212 Politics and the judiciary
By 1985, in the case of Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority,
the Supreme Court had come to the conclusion that the commerce power
virtually gave unlimited authority to the Congress to legislate on matters
of national interest without the states having the power to challenge the
exercise of federal authority in the courts. Effectively, therefore, the Court
seemed to have removed federalism from the sphere of constitutional debate
into the political arena alone. As Justice Blackmun wrote, ‘State sovereign in-
terests... are more properly protected by procedural safeguards inherent in
the structure of the federal system than by judicially created limitations on
federal power.’ However, in 1995 the Court took a new direction in relation
to the power of the federal government to control areas of life traditionally
in the sphere of the states. In United States v. Lopez the Court struck down a
federal statute which attempted to outlaw the possession of guns in a local
school zone. A student in the twelfth grade arrived at a high school in San
Antonio, Texas, carrying a concealed .38 calibre handgun and five bullets. He
was charged under the federal Gun-Free Zones Act of 1990. The Supreme
Court, in a five-to-four vote, ruled that the Act exceeded the authority of
Congress under the Commerce Clause, because the fact that the student was
carrying a gun could not substantially affect interstate commerce. Delivering
the Court’s judgement, Chief Justice Rehnquist argued that accepting the
federal government’s view that the possession of a gun could be controlled
in this way would mean that it would be difficult ‘to posit any activity by
an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.’ Congress would
be able to regulate the educational process, and to set a curriculum for lo-
cal elementary and secondary schools. This would be to conclude that there
would be no distinction between what was ‘truly national and truly local. This
we are unwilling to do.’ The Court therefore stepped back, and gave notice
that there were still constitutional boundaries to state and federal powers. In
subsequent decisions the Court reiterated their view of the limits to federal
power over the states. In the case of Alden v. Maine in 1999, the Court stated
that:
Under the federal system established by the Constitution, the States
retain a ‘residuary and inviolable sovereignty’. They are not relegated
to the role of mere provinces or political corporations, but retain the
dignity, though not the full authority, of sovereignty.In 2000 in the case of US v. Morrison the Court held that Congress did not have
the constitutional authority to provide a civil remedy for victims of ‘gender-
motivated violence’. Christy Brzonkala, a student at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute, alleged that she was raped by two other students and sued them
under the federal Violence Against Women Act of 1994. The Supreme Court
held that the Commerce Clause did not provide Congress with authority to
pass the legislation, because ‘gender-motivated crimes of violence are not, in