Darby , the "power of Congress over interstate commerce is not confined to the regulation of commerce among the states. Maryland But in McCulloch , Chief Justice Marshall insisted that "should Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government; it would become the painful duty of this tribunal.
Thus, the Court expanded Congress power over interstate commerce in a way that gave it power over the national economy. In the s, the Rehnquist Court treated these New Deal cases as the high water mark of congressional power. In the cases of U. Lopez and U. Morrison , the Court confined this regulatory authority to intrastate economic activity. In addition, in a concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich , Justice Scalia maintained that, under Lopez , "Congress may regulate even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.
Most recently, in the health care case of NFIB v. Sebelius , in , a majority of the justices found that a mandate to compel a person to engage in the economic activity of buying health insurance was beyond the powers of Congress under both the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses. The dispute over the breadth of the meaning of "commerce" turns, in large part, on the purposes one attributes to the clause, and to the Constitution as a whole, and what one thinks is the relevance of such purposes to the meaning of the text.
At Philadelphia in , the Convention resolved that Congress could "legislate in all cases. Convention 21 Max Farrand ed. This was then translated by the Committee of Detail into the present enumeration of powers in Article I, Section 8, which was accepted as a functional equivalent by the Convention without much discussion.
Proponents of an expansive reading claim that the power to regulate commerce should extend to any problem the states cannot separately solve. Those who support a narrower reading observe that the Constitution aims to constrain, as well as to empower, Congress, and the broadest reading of the Commerce power extends well beyond anything the framers imagined. As the dissenters in the health care case observed, "Article I contains no whatever-it-takes-to-solve-a-national-problem power.
For contrasting views of evidence on the original public meaning of the terms in the Commerce Clause, compare Randy E. Balkin, Living Originalism ; Randy E. As Professor Koppelman and my jointly-authored essay shows, abundant evidence—including what we know about slavery at the time of the Founding—tells us that the original meaning of the Commerce Clause gave Congress the power to make regular, and even to prohibit, the trade, transportation or movement of persons and goods from one state to a foreign nation, to another state, or to an Indian tribe.
It did not originally include the power to regulate the economic activities, like manufacturing or agriculture, that produced the goods to be traded or transported. We should follow the original meaning of this provision for the same reason we limit California to the same number of Senators as Delaware, notwithstanding the vast disparity between their populations, or limit the president to a person who is at least thirty-five years old, though some who are younger than thirty-five might make excellent presidents.
A written constitution is the law that governs those who govern us. And those who govern us— whether the Congress, the president, or the courts—can no more properly change the law that governs them without going through the amendment process of Article V, than can the people can change the speed limits imposed on them without going through the legislative process. But such an oath would be meaningless if it was merely promising to obey whatever meaning a government official later wants the Constitution to mean.
I agree with Professor Koppelman that the Founders attempted to distinguish the problems that were best handled at the national level from those best handled by the states.
But they did so by drafting a specific list of such powers, rather than leave it to the national authority to decide the scope of its own power. Where later developments justify adding to these national powers, such expansion is properly handled by an Article V constitutional amendment, as the Constitution was once amended to give Congress the power to prohibit the intrastate economic activity of producing and selling alcohol.
See the Eighteenth Amendment. Enforcing the original meaning of the Commerce Clause does not mean that other economic activities are free from any government regulation. It merely means that the power to regulate all intrastate economic activities resides with each of the fifty states. Where national uniformity and coordination between states are desirable, these goals can be achieved by the Interstate Compacts Clause of Article I, Section 8, by which states may enter into agreements or compacts with another state or states, provided they have the consent of Congress.
Many such compacts exist. I identify some of the key advantages of decentralizing most law-making at the state level in my statement on Federalism. However, they continued to argue that the Constitution should prohibit the states from participating in the international slave trade, including the importation of new slaves from Africa, and the exportation of slaves to other countries. The Convention postponed making a final decision on the international slave trade until late in the deliberations due to the contentious nature of the issue.
Once the Convention had finished amending the first draft from the Committee of Detail, a new set of unresolved questions were sent to several different committees for resolution.
During the Convention's late July recess, the Committee of Detail inserted language that prohibited the federal government from attempting to ban international slave trading and prohibited imposing taxes on the purchase or sale of slaves.
This committee developed a compromise. In exchange for this concession, the federal government's power to regulate foreign commerce would be strengthened by provisions that allowed taxation of slave trades in the international market and provisions that reduced the requirement for passage of navigation acts from two-thirds majorities of both houses of Congress to a simple majority.
It stated three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves would be counted for representation purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of the members of the United States House of Representatives. It was proposed by delegates James Wilson and Roger Sherman. This was eventually adopted by the Convention. Other compromises dealing with slavery were also made.
These included a complete Constitutional ban on debating or passing any new legislation that would end the importation of slaves until at least 20 years after the ratification of the Constitution. Additionally, a requirement that runaway slaves be returned to the state from which they originated even if they had fled to a free state was included.
Northern interests wanted the government to be able to impose tariffs on goods in order to protect against foreign competition. However, the Southern states feared that tariffs on their goods would hurt the trade upon which they heavily relied. The compromise was to allow tariffs only on imports from foreign countries and not exports from the United States. Therefore, when delegates decided that a president was necessary, there was a disagreement over how he or she should be elected to office.
While some delegates felt that the president should be popularly elected, others feared that the electorate would not be informed enough to make a wise decision. Other alternatives included going through each state's Senate to elect the president.
In the end, the two sides compromised with the creation of the Electoral College. Thus, the citizens vote for electors who then vote for the president. The Constitution was drafted on September 16, Delaware was the first state to ratify it on December 7, During the ratification and adoption process, two distinct parties had developed. Some argue that it refers simply to trade or exchange, while others claim that the Framers of the Constitution intended to describe more broadly commercial and social intercourse between citizens of different states.
Thus, the interpretation of "commerce" affects the appropriate dividing line between federal and state power. Moreover, what constitutes "interstate" commercial activity has also been subject to consistent debate. In Gibbons v. Ogden , 22 U. In Swift and Company v. United States , U. From about until about , the Supreme Court used a narrow version of the Commerce Clause.
However, beginning with NLRB v. Decisions such as NLRB v. Jones , United States v. Darby , U.
0コメント