Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law Upheld

Despite the efforts of the Bush administration, conservatism-at least in the principle of limited federal government-prevails:

In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft overstepped his authority in 2001 by trying to use a federal drug law to prosecute doctors who prescribed lethal overdoses under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, the only law in the nation that allows physician-assisted suicide. The measure has been approved twice by Oregon voters and upheld by lower court rulings.

Before you go thinking I'm in favor of limited government in general (come on, I'm a liberal) you should understand that I think of this more as an issue of individual freedom, as protected by the states, and I firmly believe in the right of the various states to expand the freedoms of their citizens beyond the emanations of the Bill of Rights. At the same time, I believe the federal government and the states have no right to limit those freedoms beyond where we find them to exist nowadays.

Of course you have your naysayers; specifically Scalia, Thomas, and the new Justice Roberts:

Writing in dissent, Scalia attacked the finding that the attorney general "lacked authority to declare assisted suicide illicit" under the federal law. "This question-begging conclusion is obscured by a flurry of arguments that distort the statute and disregard settled principles of our interpretive jurisprudence," he wrote.

Scalia backed the government's position that assisting in suicide was not a "legitimate medical purpose." Saying that the court's decision "is perhaps driven by a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the Federal Government's business," Scalia wrote that "it is easy to sympathize with that position." However, the government has long been able to use its powers "for the purpose of protecting public morality," he said.

I haven't read the full opinion yet, so it's hard to get a full sense of Scalia's argument. But it's difficult to reconcile this view with his views earlier that generally favor strongly restricting the authority of the federal government of the states. It's hard to feel that it's anything more then Scalia changing his mind because this issue matters more to him then say, gun control laws outside of schools. Perhaps in reading the full dissent I could see specifically why he feels this is different than that...or perhaps I'd see a lot of legal obfuscation in an effort by Scalia to hide that fact exactly. Either way, today's a good day for the states, and a not so good day for moralists in the Bush administration or on the Supreme Court.