Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 729.0

529US3

Unit: $U54

[10-04-01 09:35:40] PAGES PGT: OPIN

654

UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Souter, J., dissenting

at violence against women, as an alternative to the generic
state tort causes of action found to be poor tools of action by
the state task forces. See S. Rep. No. 101–545, at 45 (noting
difﬁculty of ﬁtting gender-motivated crimes into common-
law categories). As the 1993 Senate Report put it, “The
Violence Against Women Act is intended to respond both to
the underlying attitude that this violence is somehow less
serious than other crime and to the resulting failure of our
Its goals
criminal justice system to address such violence.
are both symbolic and practical . . . .” S. Rep. No. 103–138,
at 38.

The collective opinion of state ofﬁcials that the Act was
needed continues virtually unchanged, and when the Civil
Rights Remedy was challenged in court, the States came
to its defense. Thirty-six of them and the Commonwealth
of Puerto Rico have ﬁled an amicus brief in support of
petitioners in these cases, and only one State has taken re-
spondents’ side.
It is, then, not the least irony of these cases
that the States will be forced to enjoy the new federalism
whether they want it or not. For with the Court’s decision
today, Antonio Morrison, like Carter Coal’s James Carter
before him, has “won the states’ rights plea against the
states themselves.” R. Jackson, The Struggle for Judicial
Supremacy 160 (1941).

III

All of this convinces me that today’s ebb of the com-
merce power rests on error, and at the same time leads me
to doubt that the majority’s view will prove to be enduring
law. There is yet one more reason for doubt. Although we
sense the presence of Carter Coal, Schechter, and Usery once
again, the majority embraces them only at arm’s-length.
Where such decisions once stood for rules, today’s opinion
points to considerations by which substantial effects are dis-
counted. Cases standing for the sufﬁciency of substantial
effects are not overruled; cases overruled since 1937 are not
quite revived. The Court’s thinking betokens less clearly