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Commerce Clause
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The use of the Commerce Clause by Congress to justify its legislative power has been the subject of long, intense political controversy. Interpretation of the sixteen words of the Commerce Clause has helped define the balance of power between the federal government and the states. As such, it has a direct impact on the lives of US citizens.
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Congress, acting pursuant to the Commerce Clause, has power to regulate the agencies and instrumentalities of interstate and foreign commerce, such as private and common carriers. A bridge is an instrumentality of interstate commerce when it spans navigable waters or is used by travelers and merchandise passing across state lines. Navigable waters are instrumentalities of commerce subject to the control of federal and state legislation. A bridge over a navigable stream located in a single state is ... subject to concurrent control by the state.
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The Commerce Clause has become the greatest source of federal power under the Constitution. Congress had no power to regulate commerce under the Articles of Confederation, and the states acted in a variety of ways to restrict the flow of commerce between one another. The first Supreme Court case to deal with the Commerce Clause involved the power of states to grant monopolies over steamboat navigation in their waterways. In that case, Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Chief Justice John Marshall defined the commerce power broadly to include transportation, rather than limiting it to buying and selling, and struck down New York’s monopoly for steamboats. This ruling increased the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce and create a national economy.
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The Commerce Clause does not prohibit a state from imposing a tax on a natural resource that is produced within its borders and that is sold primarily to residents of other states. In Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana, 453 U.S. 609, 101 S. Ct. 2946, 69 L. Ed. 2d 884 (1981), the Supreme Court upheld a 30 percent severance tax levied by Montana on the production of coal, the bulk of which was exported for sale to other states. The amount of the tax was challenged as an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. The Court reasoned that the Commerce Clause does not give the residents of one state the right to obtain resources from another state at what they consider a reasonable price, since that right would enable one state to control the development and depletion of natural resources in another state. Also, if that right were recognized, state and federal courts would be forced to formulate and apply a test for determining what is a reasonable rate of taxation on legitimate subjects of taxation, tasks that rightfully belong to the legislature.
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The Commerce Clause has been strectched so far that by the case of Stafford v. Wallace (1922), the Court affirmed a federal law regulating the Chicago meatpacking industry even though these businesses were only native to the city of Chicago. The Court in Stafford reasoned that the stockyards "are but a throat through which the current (of commerce) flows," and that the stockyards were "great national public utilities." This type of sophistic jurisprudence is beyond the pale!
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The emergence of the Commerce Clause as a “new” source of federal power was addressed in a speech by Alfred Clark before the Oregon Bar Association on September 2, 1943. Mr. Clark stated, in part:
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Commerce Clause