LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Commerce Clause: Interstate Commerce
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The Commerce Clause authorizes Congress to regulate commerce in order to ensure the flow of interstate commerce free from local restraints imposed by various states. When Congress deems an aspect of interstate commerce to be in need of supervision, it will enact legislation that must have some real and rational relation to the subject of regulation. Congress can constitutionally provide at what point subjects of interstate commerce become subjects of state law and, therefore, state regulation.
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In other words, today’s trouble with the commerce clause rests on a misunderstanding that predates the republic. Within their limited worldview, the framers intended nothing more than to give Congress a well-defined power over one branch of human life–and that only in one special instance. They never dreamed that two centuries of new social insight would turn the interstate commerce clause into the most powerful sixteen words in the entire Constitution.
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Jones & Laughlin Steel [and other cases] ushered in an era of Commerce Clause jurisprudence that greatly expanded the previously defined authority of Congress under that Clause. In part, this was a recognition of the great changes that had occurred in the way business was carried on in this country. Enterprises that had once been local or at most regional in nature had become national in scope. But the doctrinal change ... reflected a view that earlier Commerce Clause cases artificially had constrained the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.
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The commerce clause wasn’t always interpreted as a catch-all escape hatch to justify regulation in areas where the federal government lacked explicit constitutional authority. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and ban the sale of manufacture of alcoholic beverages. Congress didn’t think to take either action based on the commerce clause even though both activities affected interstate commerce far more substantially than many things so regulated today.
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Businessmen are not alone in opposing Commerce Clause power, though. Proposed legislation known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, would prohibit private employers from discriminating against homosexuals. What is the basis for this bill? Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce, of course.
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Is this a form of Balkanization the founders contemplated in the Commerce Clause? What is textual inference of Commerce Clause when Congress has failed to act? Who is regulating interstate commerce here - Congress or the Courts?
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Interstate Commerce