High on Federalism: Marijuana's Challenge to State-Federal Relations

Orange County Lawyers Chapter

Speakers: 

• Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute

Speakers: 

• Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute

Please join the Orange County Federalist Society on Tuesday, March 10, 2015 for a special presentation by Mr. Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, as he addresses issues concerning the legalization of marijuana in states such as Colorado, and specifically, the litigation by the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma against the state of Colorado.  The litigation contends that newly legal marijuana from neighbor Colorado is being illegally trafficked across their borders, negatively impacting the health and safety of their states' residents. The suit asserts that under the U.S. Constitution's supremacy clause, Colorado's decision to legalize and regulate the sale of recreational marijuana cannot stand so long as cannabis remains illegal under federal law.
 
Ilya Shapiro is editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. Before joining Cato, he was a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues and practiced international, political, commercial, and antitrust litigation at Patton Boggs and Cleary Gottlieb.
 
Mr. Shapiro is the co-author of Religious Liberties for Corporations? Hobby Lobby, the Affordable Care Act, and the Constitution (Palgrave Pivot 2014). He has contributed to a variety of academic, popular, and professional publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, L.A. Times, USA Today, National Law Journal, Weekly Standard, New York Times Online, and National Review Online. He also regularly provides commentary for various media outlets, including CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision and Telemundo, the Colbert Report, and NPR.

Before entering private practice, Mr. Shapiro clerked for Judge E. Grady Jolly of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.  He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics, and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.

RSVP and Pay: To RSVP and pay by credit card, navigate to http://ocfederalist.blogspot.com/ and click the Buy Now button on the right panel. To pay by credit card, cash, or check at the door, please send an RSVP to Carol Matheis, at [email protected] by no later than Monday, March 9th, and make checks payable to "The Federalist Society."  
 
We welcome members, nonmembers, attorneys and non-attorneys to our events.

Cost: $35 for lunch and 1 hour of MCLE (substance abuse) credit. (The Federalist Society is a California State Bar approved provider of MCLE).