Sorry to burden everyone else with my research, but does anyone know where I might be able to find information on the history of the commerce clause of the constitution?
a general search on Google turned up several-
Google
Now that you got us here, what is it that’s interesting about it?
The Commerce Clause has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to give the Federal Government a lot of powers. It’s been that way for a LONG time.
Basically, the Commerce Clause is how the federal government justifies doing almost everything that it does.
Strictly, if a matter involves one state and one state only, it’s a matter for that state’s government to deal with.
The second that anything crosses a state line, be it a truck carrying toxic waste, a telephone call made from suburban Connecticut into Manhattan, etc., it becomes a federal matter.
It’s called the “Commerce Clause” because it’s usually done with regard to interstate commerce. This was helpful in the Civil Rights era because it was stretched to a point where if someone was restricted on making/spending a dollar in Mississippi, that dollar couldn’t be made/spent in Alabama, etc.
I’m sure another constitutional expert, who hopefully has drank fewer beers than I tonight, will explain this better if you’re still unclear.
The clause in question is
And as others have indicated, it has been stretched to all kinds of things that are not, in the strictest sense, commerce “among the several states”. However, there have been a couple recent decisions by the Supreme Court that put a limit to this stretching. One that I recall was the voiding of a federal law that allowed a rape victim to sue her attacker in federal court.