SUPREME COURT AND SEPARATION OF POWERS
This essay analyzes the decisions of the Supreme Court on the Commerce Clause, U.S. Const., Article I, Section 8 (2), and the separation of federal and state power, as illustrated by selected cases, and examines critically the propositions advanced in the cited statement.
The statement grossly oversimplifies the course of Supreme Court interpretations of the Commerce Clause. According to it, the Court has erred whenever it has substituted its subjective judgments in interpreting that clause, particularly whenever those judgments have differed from the view of the people as expressed through congressional legislation. In fact, Court interpretations of the Commerce Clause have sometimes been subjective but, in general, the Court, despite many twists and turns, has flexibly interpreted the Commerce Clause in a manner which has permitted it to respond to the changing needs of a federal system. Generally its decisions have been in the direction of a "restraintist" interpretation which upholds congressional legislation and expanded federal powers but also at other times stressed the need to defend states rights against encroachments of federal power.
The Court of Chief Justice John Marshall was faced with the necessity of interpreting the Commerce Clause broadly so as to establish federal power to regulate interstate commerce and to prevent attempts by states to usurp federal power, impose local monopolies and to interfere with the exercise of private property rights. That Court was "activist," but largely and with some exceptions, in favor of restraining states rights.
An equilibrium between federal and state power was temporarily achieved by a series of decisions in the early 1900s. The Lottery Case (Champion v. Ames), (188 U.S. 321 (1903)) clearly established the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause to exclude from interstate commerce commodities (in that case lottery ticket...