Some home owners’ associations (HOAs) in some residential subdivisions in North Carolina have a lot of power. They can foreclose on the homeowner’s propery for violating their rules.
A legislative body that has only the powers enumerated in Article I, Section Eight. Those powers notably do not include the general power to proscribe citizens from certain behavior, nor generally to order citizens to perform certain tasks. That power, however, is almost boundless for state legislatures. Congress does not have the power to outlaw murder, while your state legislature could outlaw nosepicking if it wished.
You have to read the whole clause, which is to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare.” Congress does not have the power to regulate for the general welfare, only to tax and spend for the general welfare. Regulation must be based on one of the other clauses, such as regulation of interstate commerce.
The “Police Power” is simply a term to designate a right to enact laws.
Murder is against federal law, it just has to have the federal jurisdiction element. Most criminal laws are passed under authority of the Commerce clause.
Right, I meant actually, they can pass laws under the GW clause and within the spending power, withold funds, blackmail states into agreeing, such as South Dakota v. Dole.
Then you and I have very different ideas of what constitutes a “criminal law.”
The only thing Congress can do under the Commerce Clause is—surprise—regulate interstate commerce. The Commerce Clause has pretty specific jurisprudence behind it, and limits have been reached a couple of times in recent years. Civil Rights–era cases such as Heart of Atlanta Motel or Daniel v. Paul made it seem like Congress’s power was unlimited, but read the constraints laid down more recently in Perez v. United States, 402 U.S. 146 (1971), and U.S. v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995).
True Lopez struck down the gun law in question, and in Jones v. United States, they struck down a federal arson law as not within the Commerce Clause power. However, MOST criminal laws withstand contitutional commerce clause muster, as we see in Raich, which cites Lopez.
The CC along with the “Necessary and proper clause” are considered total.
Held: Congress’ Commerce Clause authority includes the power to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana in compliance with California law. Pp. 6—31.
That’s a rather um, novel, interpretation. I hope you’re not planning to sit for the bar exam any time soon.
Really? Why do you think the SC cites the N&P clause prefatory to the mention of Commerce in Raich then:
…California is one of at least nine States that authorize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.1 The question presented in this case is whether the power vested in Congress by Article I, §8, of the Constitution “[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” its authority to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States” includes the power to prohibit the local cultivation and use of marijuana in compliance with California law.