Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Ricky B
The rationale of the decision is that the entirely intra-state act of growing and then consuming one's own wheat could affect interstate commerce and therefore Congress could regulate it.
|
I disagree with that representation.
The majority argued that what Filburn produced was of no consequence. However if there were a hundred (or a thousand) Filburns, growing their own wheat, for their own consumption, then interstate commerce
may be affected.
The Court ruled not on what was before them, but what might happen, should others follow Filburns lead. Hence the Court departed from its normal and ordinary duty to try cases that were before them, to argue a decision for future cases that may or may not come before them.
This was a tremendous departure from prior legislation by the Congress. Never before had agriculture come under the scope of any Federal power. What people raised on their farms was theirs. What they traded to other local people, ostensibly for other consumables they themselves did not produce, was regulated by the State (if regulated at all), as intrastate commerce.
Until such a time that local produce was introduced into an interstate market, there was no federal authority over them. That all changed with the decision in
Wickard.
Quote:
|
But even if appellee's activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect.'
|
One might think that
if the conduct does not exert a substantial economic affect, then Congress may not regulate the activity. One would be wrong.
In
Raich, the Court said that any conduct by which,
‘the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities[,]’ is reachable by the Congress, simply by calling it interstate commerce. This greatly expands the powers of the Congress, which were expanded by
Wickard and its progeny.
Remembering that in the original Gun Control Act of 1968, the Congress declared that any substance that once traveled in interstate commerce, was forever in interstate commerce (and which definition, the Court has agreed), we then have our basis of federal gun control.
Which is the basis for the ATF's recent letters.
Which is also the basis of the laws enacted in Montana and Tennessee. Here they declare that materials moving into the State, cease to be in commerce, if they never leave the State. The States go further, they claim that a bar of steel, changed in character, do not become "wards" of federal power, unless actually placed in interstate commerce.
That is the 10th amendment assertion.