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That same Secretary of Agriculture was also responsible for one of the more surprising cases I remember from law school. Question: Does the Constitution's inte
by bjt 7y ago
That same Secretary of Agriculture was also responsible for one of the more surprising cases I remember from law school.
Question: Does the Constitution's interstate commerce clause give Congress the power to regulate how much wheat a farmer can grow for his own consumption, if it's never sold to anyone else and never crosses state lines?
The district court said no. The Supreme Court said yes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
- nesadi 7y agoIs it surprising though? Your consumption is an important part of any market. By removing your demand from the market, you're affecting it and the price of wheat or whatever good. At an individual level, it probably won't change the scale much, but if enough people do produce only for self-consumption, it can have large enough effects on the market that there shouldn't really be any question that it falls under commerce. The question should rather be whether to regulate the market for wheat at all and what incentives/consequences that might have.
- csallen 7y agoIt seems to me that, using this line of reasoning, one could justify classifying any action as interstate commerce.
- phalangion 7y agoRight. Under this classification, my choice to make my own bread rather than buy it at the store, or my choice not to eat bread at all, is interstate commerce.
- gamblor956 7y agoBased on your super-simplified classification, sure. Based on the actual reasoning of the SCOTUS in Wickard, you would be quite wrong.
- nesadi 7y agoYou could actually. Which is why I think it's really the wrong point to argue about. Almost everything we do is in some way involved with the market and has market effects.
- thoughtstheseus 7y agoYes. Your consumption is only part of the market if you interact with the "market". The trend of forced market interaction is personally annonying.
- nesadi 7y agoNo, your decision not to consume from the market is itself an action on the market. There's nothing forced about it. It's just a natural way of how things work, and it's an important aspect to consider when writing policy or regulation.
- Mirioron 7y agoIt seems to me that the Interstate Commerce Clause has pretty much sidestepped a large portion of the rest of the Constitution of the US.
- dantheman 7y agoExactly, the federal government is supposed to have enumerated powers. That is why prohibition required an amendment, after the commerce clause we didn't need any amendments for the war on drugs.
- gamblor956 7y agoDrugs are made in one state. Sold in another. That is quite literally within the original Constitutional scope of the interstate commerce clause. No amendment needed... Prohibition required an amendment because at the time most alcohol was brewed/distilled/whatever locally and sold locally, so the amount of interstate alcohol commerce was limited and would not have survived constitutional review. (Now, most alcohol is made in a few states and sold nationally, so the interstate commerce clause would apply as a matter of original scope.)
- dantheman 7y agoMarijuana the #1 drug in the drug war can be and is grown everywhere.
- sokoloff 7y agoPretty much. Federally illegal drug (can't be sold interstate) being produced and consumed personally on someone's property: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
- tanzbaer 7y agoWhat utter bullshit.
- NullPrefix 7y agoTax man: Why you do not pay taxes from this grow operation of yours? Grow man: This is personal use only! Tax man: Nuh uh!
- pietroglyph 7y agoThis case wasn't about taxes, it was about controlling wheat supply in order to stabilize the national wheat price during the Great Depression.
- NullPrefix 7y agoWhat you're saying is correct, however, my point is that, intended or not, one part of government is giving power to another part of government.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoInteresting. He was growing wheat to feed animals. The court decided that him withdrawing from the interstate wheat market was equivalent to him participating in the interstate wheat market. Because in both cases you are affecting the interstate market. Doesn’t make much sense to me. If they had said, he’s selling the animals made from wheat across state lines, so the production is regulable, that would at least give me an idea of what kinds of activity are not regulable. But as it stands, it seems like as long as there is one supply chain that crosses state lines, anyone engaging in any of the same activities are subject to federal oversight. Even if they are operating distinctly from that supply chain, and distributing only within state lines. Seems impossibly broad to me. But maybe I’m misunderstanding and it was selling the animals across state lines that triggered the federal jurisdiction.
- dantheman 7y agoYou're not misunderstanding it - it was a giant power grab, and the federal government can say anything that affects interstate commerce is within their purview.
- joeblow9999 7y agoits a cornerstone of the deug war
- LocalH 7y agoThe point was to give the federal government nearly unlimited power. Seems to have worked so far, too. :(
- gamblor956 7y agoYou're misunderstanding it. The part everyone leaves out when they complain about this case is that he was also growing wheat to sell across state lines. The wheat he was feeding to his animals was in addition to that wheat, and the combination of the two amounts put him over the wheat restrictions. (Note: there is some argument over whether the farmer sold any wheat inter-state in the particular year at issue. That is irrelevant, since he definitely participated in interstate commerce with the same farm in prior and following years, so the activity itself was treated as an interstate commercial activity. If he had always just stuck to just growing his own wheat for private (non-commercial) use, the wheat controls would not have applied. There is an entire string of SCOTUS cases limiting future cases on precisely those grounds--that purely intra-state commercial activities doesn't give rise to federal jurisdiction of the Commerce Clause. The key is that the contemplated commercial activity must (a) be primarily local in nature and (b) not actually cross state lines.
- mieseratte 7y agoAs others have noted, this seems like a bit of a stretch and a power-grab. Have there been any attempts, successful or otherwise, to claw-back the Federal power by the interpretation of the interstate commerce clause?
- LocalH 7y agoAs far as I'm aware, every time it's made it to the SCOTUS, they've held in favor of the federal government.
- gamblor956 7y agoYou would be quite wrong. The Rehnquist court began moving back in the other direction of limiting the commerce clause, and generally subsequent courts have continued this trend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause#The_Rehnquist_Court https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause#The_Rehnquist_...
- LocalH 7y agoIn this case, I'm quite happy to be wrong. Thank you.
- tareqak 7y agoYou could say the same about a state or municipality not having a sales tax: it has has an effect on interstate commerce, ergo the federal government is allowed to force each state or municipality to have a sales tax of some kind. (Or, I’m totally misinterpreting this).
- gamblor956 7y agoYou're misinterpreting it. A sales tax is a purely local tax--an item must be purchased in person so the transaction is always local. A use tax is a interstate tax, and applies where the good is purchased in one state but brought into another. For online sales, where the purchase is treated as occurring in the location of the buyer, it is technically a "use" tax that applies (because the item is sold in one state but actually shipped to another state), which is why the federal government can theoretically pass a national "sales" tax law for internet commerce and why states can't impose a sales tax on items sold online directly to out-of-state customers. Yes, it's complicated, especially since most sales and use tax laws generally use the term "sales" tax to refer to what is actually a "use" tax.