comerce clause essays

comerce clause essays The United States Constitution gives very specific powers to congress. These powers are very limited and are each enumerated in the text of the Constitution. One of the powers is [t]o regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes (Article I, Section 8). This is the only reference in the constitution that speaks about commerce. The Tenth Amendment states that [t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. By reading these statements in the constitution most people would believe that the states have enormous power to control the day to day activities within their state borders. James Madison, who was one of the biggest supporters of a powerful federal government, wrote the following in the Federalist Papers. The powers delegated by the . . . Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. . . . The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs; concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State (1778). But during oral arguments involving the application of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution, Justice Antonin Scalia pressed the Solicitor General [Seth P. Waxman] to name a single activity or program that our modern-day Congress might undertake that would fall outside the bounds of the Constitution. The stunned Clinton appointee could not think of one (Moore, 1999) How did we get from federal powers that are few and defined to powers that have no bounds? One of...