The Competitive Enterprise Institute, in a cert petition with POL favorite Michael McConnell on the brief, challenges a Fifth Circuit decision upholding the multi-hundred-billion dollar tobacco settlement negotiated by state attorneys general—effectively a tax and a state-mandated cartelization without any legislative approval, even aside from the giveaway of billions of dollars to trial lawyers who used a questionable legal theory. Sadly, I'm not optimistic about the willingness of the Supreme Court to enforce the Constitution's Compact Clause, which means that it's been "amended" out of the Constitution as inconvenient. See also Michael Greve.