On Thursday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he was rescinding all of the Obama administration's enforcement guidance that had foresworn enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act against marijuana that was legal under state law.

There has been plenty of criticism of Sessions's new position, including from my co-bloggers Ilya and Jonathan here. One major line I've seen in defense of Sessions's action is that his position is truer to the rule of law: Maybe Congress should decentralize marijuana policy, the argument goes, but until it does the executive branch should be enforcing the law, not suspending or dispensing with ones it thinks are unwise.

As a general principle, I think there is a lot to that. But in this case, I do not think the rule of law requires the renewed enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, and if anything requires the opposite. My reasons are detailed in my three-year-old paper on marijuana federalism, State Regulation and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but there are two key points:

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