Taking on Wickard: James Huffman on Obamacare and the Commerce Clause

Instapundit has the link to the article:
Wickard v. Filburn is the New Deal U.S. Supreme Court case that said Congress could regulate whether you could grow wheat on your property or not, even if you intended to use all the wheat for your own purposes.  It essentially expanded the commerce clause to allow U.S. Congress to regulate anything--trumping State or local law in the process.  This decision turned the 10th Amendment on its head and in large part made it meaningless:  10th Amendment, Rights of the States under Constitution:  "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."  Many commentators have been sharply critical of Wickard.  
Professor Huffman suggests (perhaps) more might be coming from the Supreme Court:

Professor James Huffman:
All he is saying, is give federalism a chance...

Although the smart money will be with Epstein’s forecast of more doctrinal incrementalism, if not with his wager on the precise direction it will take, we should demand and expect better from our nation’s highest court. As recently as its last term in Bond v. United States, the Court suggested a foundation for what might be called, in today’s parlance, a “reset” of commerce clause doctrine in particular and federalism doctrine in general. 

The structure of federalism protects individual liberty from government excess. 

The issue in Bond was whether an individual has standing to challenge the validity of a federal law on the ground that Congress did not have authority to enact the law and was therefore in violation of the 10th Amendment, which states that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In response to the government’s argument that only a state government can challenge the constitutionality of Congressional acts alleged to infringe on the powers of the states, Justice Kennedy, writing for a unanimous court, held that the individual claimant does have standing because “[w]hen government acts in excess of its lawful powers, . . . liberty is at stake.”

As they say, read the whole thing.   More than Portlandia comes out of Portland.