Responses To Morrison
Morrison, like Boerne, Kimel and Garrett, was part of a series of Rehnquist Court decisions from 1999 through 2001 holding that state sovereignty limits various federal civil rights laws. The United States v. Morrison decision was also seen by the press as part of the Rehnquist Court's series of federalism decisions, mainly because of the Court's previous decisions in Lopez and other cases.
The Washington Post came out in favor of the Morrison decision: "The court got it right. If Congress could federalize rape and assault, it's hard to think of anything it couldn't." Lawyer and writer Wendy Kaminer agreed with the courts that Congress had overstepped its bounds by invoking the Commerce Clause: "The price of upholding VAWA's civil rights remedy is an unconstitutional grant of unlimited power to Congress, power that will not always be used wisely or with regard to individual rights. We need to combat sexual violence without making a federal case of it."
Professor Catharine MacKinnon cites the Morrison decision as a landmark patriarchal legal event, which trivializes domestic violence by deeming it not important enough to be a federal issue. Law Professor Peter M. Shane said that the attorneys general of 36 states had endorsed the VAWA, and Shane argued that the endorsement "exposes one of the more bizarre aspects of the Supreme Court's recent activism on behalf of state sovereignty: From the states' point of view, this campaign is often pointless and sometimes counterproductive." According to Shane, the 36 attorneys general called the Violence Against Women Act "a particularly appropriate remedy for the harm caused by gender-motivated violence."
Read more about this topic: United States V. Morrison
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“Research shows clearly that parents who have modeled nurturant, reassuring responses to infants’ fears and distress by soothing words and stroking gentleness have toddlers who already can stroke a crying child’s hair. Toddlers whose special adults model kindliness will even pick up a cookie dropped from a peer’s high chair and return it to the crying peer rather than eat it themselves!”
—Alice Sterling Honig (20th century)