The Supreme Court's Raich ruling last year was a disaster not just for federalism (and freedom), and the founders' original notion of limited government, but for coherent judicial philosophy in general. Professor Reynolds (and Brandon Denning) explain explain why:

As a practical matter, of course, Supreme Court control over the lower courts has been notional for some time. Lower court caseloads have been exploding, while the Supreme Court is actually hearing fewer cases than it did decades ago. But the Supreme Court’s power has always stemmed more from example than from its ability to directly overturn lower courts. Yet the more unclear and hesitant the Supreme Court seems, the less likely it is that lower courts will follow its lead.

That poses rather serious problems for the justice system. The legitimacy of lower courts’ rulings, after all, stems largely from the notion that they are supervised by higher courts. In the absence of such supervision, decisions at the court of appeals level, if they are both effectively unreviewable (or at least unreviewed) and not really guided by principles from above, are simply ad hoc judgments by those who happen to have gotten hold of the case. These decisions are not much different from the decisions of faceless bureaucrats in the Executive Branch, with the exception, perhaps, that those faceless bureaucrats are under the authority of elected officials—the President and, to some extent, Congress—and hence subject to more public scrutiny and supervision than the courts.

A system of ad hoc decisions guided more by institutional expediency and personal preference than by overarching principle may or may not be a bad thing, but it is not a system of justice as we know it. Yet the Supreme Court’s retreats this term, coupled with its self-imposed caseload reductions in recent years, suggest that the Court is less concerned than it should be with its role in overseeing the lower courts...

...With the demise of the doctrine of enumerated powers as a restraint on federal power, the only protection remaining for the liberties of citizens not sheltered by powerful lobbying groups is that provided by the positive limitations on government embodied in the Bill of Rights. Those provisions were inserted by pessimists who did not believe—rightly, as it turns out—that the doctrine of enumerated powers would be enough to restrain the federal government over the long term. There is no reason to believe, however, that the Bill of Rights itself will survive over the long term if the rest of the plan is abandoned. As National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers say, once you start relying on the backup systems, you are already in trouble. But that is where we are today.

This is the consequence, over decades, of court appointments, by both Democrats and Republicans, who refuse to take the Constitution seriously. And if the excerpt isn't enough to interest you, it has zombies, too.