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Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)

655

Breyer, J., dissenting

a return to the conceptual straitjackets of Schechter and
Carter Coal and Usery than to something like the unsteady
state of obscenity law between Redrup v. New York, 386
U. S. 767 (1967) (per curiam), and Miller v. California,
413 U. S. 15 (1973), a period in which the failure to provide
a workable deﬁnition left this Court to review each case
ad hoc. See id., at 22, n. 3; Interstate Circuit, Inc. v. Dallas,
390 U. S. 676, 706–708 (1968) (Harlan, J., dissenting). As our
predecessors learned then, the practice of such ad hoc re-
view cannot preserve the distinction between the judicial
and the legislative, and this Court, in any event, lacks the
institutional capacity to maintain such a regime for very
long. This one will end when the majority realizes that the
conception of the commerce power for which it entertains
hopes would inevitably fail the test expressed in Justice
Holmes’s statement that “[t]he ﬁrst call of a theory of law is
that it should ﬁt the facts.” O. Holmes, The Common Law
167 (Howe ed. 1963). The facts that cannot be ignored today
are the facts of integrated national commerce and a politi-
cal relationship between States and Nation much affected
by their respective treasuries and constitutional modiﬁca-
tions adopted by the people. The federalism of some earlier
time is no more adequate to account for those facts today
than the theory of laissez-faire was able to govern the na-
tional economy 70 years ago.

Justice Breyer, with whom Justice Stevens joins,
and with whom Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg
join as to Part I–A, dissenting.

No one denies the importance of the Constitution’s fed-
Its state/federal division of authority
eralist principles.
protects liberty—both by restricting the burdens that gov-
ernment can impose from a distance and by facilitating
citizen participation in government that is closer to home.
The question is how the judiciary can best implement that