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Justiciability A justiciable dispute is one that is appropriate for judicial resolution. Does the issue fall under the jurisdiction of the court writing the opinion? Does the court think that the issue is best left to the legislature to decide? In the drug policy context the considerations above tend to illuminate attitudes of excerpts' authors regarding the particular issues being ruled upon.
...[C]lose analysis of our decisions yields some common principles that give content to the uses and limits of proportionality review. [...]
The first of these principles is that the fixing of prison terms for specific crimes involves a substantive penological judgement that, as a general matter, is "properly within the province of legislatures, not courts." [...] The second principle is that the Eighth Amendment does not mandate adoption of any one penological theory. [...] Third, marked divergences both in underlying theories of sentencing and in the length of prescribed prison terms are the inevitable, often beneficial, result of the federal structure. [...]The fourth principle at work in our cases is that proportionality review by 'federal courts should be informed by "'objective factors to the maximum possible extent.'" [...]
In asserting the constitutionality of this mandatory sentence, I offer no judgement on its wisdom. Mandatory sentencing schemes can be criticized for depriving judges of the power to exercise individual discretion when remorse and acknowledgment of guilt, or other extenuating facts, present what might seem a compelling case for departure from the maximum. On the other hand, broad and unreviewed discretion exercised by sentencing judges leads to the perception that no clear standards are being applied, and that the rule of law is imperiled by sentences imposed for no discernible reason other than the subjective reactions of the sentencing judge. The debate illustrates that, as noted at the outset, arguments for and against particular sentencing schemes are for legislatures to resolve.
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As I indicated at the outset, it is not the function of this Court -- at least not in Fourth Amendment cases -- to weigh petitioners' privacy interest against the State's interest in meeting the crisis of "crack babies" that developed in the late 1980's.
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Because the decision raises significant questions as to the ability of the United States to enforce the Nation's drug laws, we granted certiorari.
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The Cooperative [...] argues that use of schedule I drugs generally -- whether placed in schedule I by Congress or the Attorney General -- can be medically necessary, notwithstanding that they have "no currently accepted medical use." According to the Cooperative, a drug may not yet have achieved general acceptance as a medical treatment but may nonetheless have medical benefits to a particular patient or class of patients. We decline to parse the statute in this manner. It is clear from the text of the Act that Congress has made a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception. The statute expressly contemplates that many drugs "have a useful and legitimate medical purpose and are necessary to maintain the health and general welfare of the American people," § 801(1), but it includes no exception at all for any medical use of marijuana. Unwilling to view this omission as an accident, and unable in any event to override a legislative determination manifest in a statute, we reject the Cooperative's argument.
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