E. J. Dionne Jr. sides with the majority of the Supreme Court in the Oregon case. Maybe he’s correct to do so. But it won’t do to rest the argument for the “state’s rights” position, as Dionne does, on the virtue of judicial restraint. Dionne simply assumes that striking down John Ashcroft’s interpretation of a federal law counts as “restraint.” It’s not at all obvious that it does. To make an argument that it does would require going into the legal merits of the case, not just invoking the principle of restraint as though it settled the matter.