This is longtime Cato Daily podcast host, Caleb Brown. I've hosted the Cater Daily podcast for nearly

18 years, but no more. But I wanted to leave loyal listeners with some favorite episodes that I hope

ring true and relevant to our current moment. This is one of them. Thank you for listening.

This is the Cato Daily podcast for Monday, May 12th, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. The Constitution was meant to protect liberty and shackle government. So how did we get to a world in which provisions of the Constitution are believed by many to give various branches of government unchecked authority? William H. Miller is president of the Institute for Justice

and co-author with Cato's Bob Levy of the Dirty Dozen, how 12 Supreme Court cases radically expanded

government and eroded freedom. We spoke about a few of those cases following a Cato book

forum last week. Were there any cases that almost made it into this list? I noticed you have Roe v. Wade

and Bush v. Gore at the end of the book. Actually, when we looked at the 12 cases that made the top

of the list, those were so glaringly obvious that we really felt very comfortable and confident

that it was worth doing those and no others. That's not to say there aren't a lot of bad Supreme Court cases. Of course there are.

In the regulating interstate commerce section, you talk about two cases, Wicked v. Filbert and

Gonzalez v. Rage. And I noted that Bob Levy said that the court used the exact same reasoning

in deciding both of those cases. Does that make it less likely,

you think, for this type of thinking to be overturned? There's no question that the court's

decision in Wickard, and even more recently and tragically enraish, radically expanded the reach

of federal authority and made it possible for the federal government

to get involved in the most local of activities because what they've recognized is that

it doesn't even have to be commerce, it doesn't have to be interstate. It can be completely within

a state. It can be completely something that you, in the case of medical marijuana, grow and

use for your own purposes, do not

engage in any commercial transactions. And yet that is nevertheless something that, because it may

have in the aggregate a substantial effect on something that they define as commerce, in this

...