Clashing Views In Coats V. Dish Network

The conflicts between State and Federal law are numerous, recently the high debate concerning marijuana has been seeing high interest. This case highlights a division not only in citizen perception, but also the actualized reality in the Criminal Justice system; where morality and discretion as well as State and Federal powers clash. In a recent Colorado case, Coats v. Dish Network, where an employee was terminated and later sued, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled against Coats. This recent ruling shows how far of a reach the Federal government can have when influencing laws onto States What the issue for the Coats case is concerned with, is how the Colorado courts interpreted their laws; that is, they extended the breadth of their meaning of “laws” in their statutes to include both Federal and State regulations. The courts used the Fair Labor Standards Act, a Federal law that requires all states to abide by Federal regulations concerning fair employment practices, to allow the interpretation of the word “law” to include Federal laws as well as states. Though marijuana has been allowed to some extent by Colorado’s 20th and 64th Amendments; where Federal law is

In his book Issue 15 is concerned with the legalization of marijuana. He presents two views one from E. A. Nadelmann who supports the legalization of the substance for both economic and cultural objects (arguably moral reasons as well), and the other form J. P. Walters who presents the issue as a social harm that leads to greater ills. Both present convincing issues, but what becomes relevant with the Coats case is the moral bases. That is, morally speaking, Coats was doing no harm to society as a whole and was abiding by state laws. Supporting Nadelmann’s views, the case falls under the ideology of courts using the laws to do more harm then good when confronted with marijuana