Abstract
In April of 1995, the Supreme Court overturned sixty years of legal and social precedent when it declared handguns to be outside the scope of Commerce Clause jurisdiction. With five justices deciding in favor of United States v. Lopez and four justices dissenting, the highly fragmented decision produced six separate opinions. In this analysis I apply Philip Bobbitt's interpretive typology to the Lopez case. I extend his six broad commonplaces into eleven more distinct topoi of judicial reasoning. My eleven include: original, textual, historical, doctrinal, procedural, structural, functional, telic, ethical, economic, and the anti-argument. I then turn to general policy arguments in order to see if the Supreme Court's federalism reasoning mirrors that of the public debate. I found this not to be the case. The High Court's arguments, using a wide variety of justifications, are more convoluted and complex than the two arguments of "exit" and "voice" that public policy advocates use. I conclude that how we talk about federalism matters. The reality of federalism changes with every congressional statute, executive veto, state initiative and judicial decision. Therefore, how the Supreme Court interprets the Constitution plays a large role in the functioning of American government.
Langford, Catherine L (2000). Nation v. State: rhetorical invention in the federalism controversy. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -2000 -THESIS -L365.