Why commerce clause important

After Wickard , the Court consistently held that a "rational basis" existed for Congress to enact laws under the theory that the regulated behavior substantially affected interstate commerce.

Then in , when the Court decided the Lopez case, as discussed previously, it explored the limits of the "substantially affects" test. Subsequently, in United States v.

Morrison , 99 the Court invalidated a portion of the Violence Against Women Act, which specifically created a private right of action against anyone who committed such a crime, allowing an injured party to obtain damages and other compensatory relief. The Court, however, stopped short of establishing a rule that all non-economic activity cannot be aggregated.

Further, while in Morrison , unlike in Lopez , there were numerous congressional findings, the Court stressed that although findings by the legislative branch can serve to illuminate the relationship between the regulation and interstate commerce, constitutionality ultimately turns on the legal aspects of the substantial effects doctrine, and therefore, is for the Court to decide.

Finally, the Court considered the level of attenuation between the regulated activity and its effect on interstate commerce. In this case, the Court concluded that the regulation of gender-motivated violent crime was not directed at the instrumentalities, channels or goods involved in interstate commerce, and was therefore beyond the scope of Congress's authority.

In sum, after Lopez and Morrison , the test to determine whether a regulation has a substantial effect on interstate commerce requires reviewing courts to consider the following four factors: 1 whether the regulated activity is commercial or economic in nature; 2 whether an express jurisdictional element is provided in the statute to limit its reach; 3 whether Congress made express findings about the effects of the proscribed activity on interstate commerce; and 4 whether the link between the prohibited activity and the effect on interstate commerce is attenuated.

After the decision in Lopez and Morrison , the question arose as to whether these cases were a harbinger of future restrictions on Congress's power to legislate. Arguably, the Court had intended Lopez and Morrison to have a limited effect, as the Court specifically reaffirmed much of its previous Commerce Clause case law.

Further, the statutory provisions challenged in Lopez criminal penalties for gun possession in or near schools and Morrison civil suits for gender-motivated crime were relatively unusual for statutes based on the Commerce Clause in that they did not contain a specific requirement that the activities be related to commerce.

In addition, while broad economic regulation may have noneconomic elements e. Accordingly, when provisions contained in broader regulatory schemes were challenged after Lopez and Morrison, the lower courts generally upheld them under a "broader scheme" doctrine.

Nonetheless, some lower courts considering non-economic provisions of larger regulatory schemes found that such laws might be struck down in certain applications. Generally, a court reviewing the constitutionality of a federal statute may declare the statute unconstitutional either as invalid on its face, or "as applied" to a particular set of circumstances.

When presented with an "as applied" challenge, these courts initially attempted to define the relevant "class of activity" presented by the facts of the specific case. For instance, in Ashcroft v. The challenging parties were seriously ill California residents who had obtained marijuana consistent with California's Compassionate Use Act but in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act CSA.

With respect to the first factor—whether or not the activity is commercial or economic in nature—the court concluded that the narrow class of activity in this case could not be considered commercial or economic in nature.

With no stated analysis, and apparently persuaded by the reasoning of a district court opinion, the court concluded that "[n]o such jurisdictional hook exists in the relevant portions of the CSA. With respect to whether the legislative history contains congressional findings regarding the effects on interstate commerce, the court was able to cite findings relating to the effect that intrastate drug trafficking activity would have on interstate commerce.

Finally, with respect to whether the link between the regulated activity and a substantial effect on interstate commerce is attenuated, the court expressed doubt that the interstate effect of homegrown medical marijuana is substantial. Citing authority questioning the validity of the federal government's claim of an effect on interstate commerce, the court concluded that "this factor favors a finding that the CSA cannot constitutionally be applied to the class of activities at issue in this case.

The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari specifically on the question of whether the power vested in Congress by both the "Necessary and Proper Clause, and the Commerce Clause of Article I includes the power to prohibit the local growth, possession, and use of marijuana permissible as a result of California's law. Raich , reversed the Ninth Circuit's decision and held that Congress's power to regulate commerce extends to purely local activities that are "part of an economic class of activities that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.

In reaching its conclusions, the Court relied heavily on its decision in Wickard v. Filburn , which held that the Agricultural Adjustment Act's federal quota system applied to bushels of wheat that were homegrown and personally consumed. Wickard stands for the proposition that Congress can rationally combine the effects that individual producers have on a commercial market to find substantial impacts on interstate commerce. Initially, the Court noted that because the commodities being cultivated in both cases are fungible and that well-established interstate markets exist, both markets are susceptible to fluctuations in supply and demand based on production intended for home consumption being introduced into the national market.

According to the Court, just as there was no difference between the wheat Mr. Wickard produced for personal consumption and the wheat cultivated for sale on the open market, there is no discernable difference between personal home-grown medicinal marijuana and marijuana grown for the express purpose of being sold in the interstate market.

Respondents argued that Wickard was distinguishable because in the case of wheat the activity involved was purely commercial, and the evidence clearly established that the aggregate production of wheat had a significant effect on the interstate market. Conversely, respondents claimed that the activity at issue in Raich was non-commercial—the respondents had never attempted to sell their marijuana—and Congress had made no finding that the personal cultivation and use of medicinal marijuana has a substantial effect on the interstate marijuana market.

Despite having concluded that under the "rational basis test" Congress had acted within its constitutional authority when it enacted the CSA and applied it to intrastate possession of marijuana, the Court nevertheless had to distinguish Lopez and Morrison , the Court's more recent Commerce Clause decisions.

In supporting its conclusions, the Court noted that, by characterizing marijuana as a "Schedule I" narcotic, Congress was implicitly finding that it had no medicinal value at all. In addition, the Court returned to the fact that medicinal marijuana was a fungible good, thus making it indistinguishable from the recreational versions that Congress had clearly intended to regulate.

According to the Court, to carve out medicinal use as a distinct class of activity, as the Ninth Circuit had done, would effectively make " any federal regulation including quality, prescription, or quantity controls of any locally cultivated and possessed controlled substance for any purpose beyond the 'outer limits' of Congress'[s] Commerce Clause authority.

Finally, the Court replied to the respondent's argument that its activities are not an "essential part of a larger regulatory scheme" because they are both isolated and policed by the State of California and they are completely separate and distinct from the interstate market. While the decision in Raich seemed to indicate that Congress still retained broad power over activity that affects interstate commerce, the Court has subsequently held that this power extends only to cases into which commercial activity has already been entered.

Following the enactment of the ACA, state attorneys general and others brought several lawsuits challenging various provisions of the ACA on constitutional grounds.

Chief Justice Roberts, in a controlling opinion, found that the Commerce Clause does not provide Congress with the authority to enact the individual mandate. The Chief Justice further noted that the language of the clause i. The problem with the individual mandate, as indicated by the Chief Justice, is that it "does not regulate existing commercial activity.

It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. He further explained that regulating individuals based on what they fail to do would fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the federal government in a way that was not intended by the framers of the Constitution.

The Obama Administration had argued that virtually all individuals are active in the health care market because they will need health care at some point. However, the Chief Justice declined to accept this line of reasoning, opining that the Court's Commerce Clause precedent does not support the idea that Congress can dictate the conduct of an individual today based on predicted future activity.

The Chief Justice disagreed with this argument, noting that if the Court followed this reasoning, a mandatory purchase could be permitted to solve almost any problem. See, e. There are over a hundred criminal laws which use the term "interstate commerce. United States v. Lopez, U. Morrison, U. Grant Nelson and Robert Pushaw, Jr. As will be discussed later, a requirement that the thing to be regulated be "commercial" or "mercantile," has, to some extent, been used by the Supreme Court to limit the commerce power to "commercial" activities.

See United States v. See " Case Law Development ," infra , pg. Virginia and Maryland had just finished a compact regarding the navigation and jurisdiction of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac. The commissioners who had negotiated this treaty called for a general trade convention, and various other states responded by appointing delegates to this convention.

Only when it became clear that this convention might address other issues did the Continental Congress approve of it. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States Those materials which do address congressional control over commerce focus on the necessity of uniformity in matters of foreign commerce, although the drafters clearly intended domestic commerce to be regulated as well.

Lerner, The Founder's Constitution Justia Legal Resources. Find a Lawyer. Law Students. Among the several states meant between one state and others, not within a state, where slavery existed as an economic activity. From the founding until today, the meaning of "commerce" has not been much changed. Perhaps its only expansion by the Supreme Court came in when the Court held that commerce included "a business such as insurance," which for a hundred years had been held to be solely a subject of internal state regulation.

United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Instead, the modern growth of Congress's regulatory powers has been allowed by the courts adopting an expansive reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause to give Congress power over a broad range of intrastate economic activities with a "substantial effect" on interstate commerce, when such regulation is essential to the regulation of interstate commerce narrowly defined.

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. The original purpose of the Commerce Clause was to eliminate conflicts between states due to one states economic advantage because of their access to a harbor. Before the Commerce Clause was instituted, it was common for states to engage in economic battles for these reasons.

It is understood that the federal government has regulatory power over commerce that involves foreign countries. Occasionally, states have attempted to negotiate commerce policy with foreign countries without involving the federal government. Every time that this has occurred, the courts have sided with the federal government over the states.

States have some limited ability to apply taxes to foreign commerce, but they are not allowed to dictate policy. This power is reserved for the federal government. There has long been controversy about what the word "commerce" actually means. In the Constitution, there is no specific definition of the word, leading to disagreements.

Some people state that the word refers to exchange or trade generally.