Our Changing ConstitutionPierson, Charles W. (Charles Wheeler)
History
Our Changing Constitution
Pierson, Charles W. (Charles Wheeler)
Constitutional history -- United States; United States -- Politics and government
Especially noteworthy is the rapidly expanding body of social
legislation--federal Employers' Liability Act, Hours of Service acts,
Child Labor Law, White Slave Act and the like, all drawn with an eye to
the commerce clause but designed to accomplish objects quite distinct
from the regulation of commerce.
As already said, the Commerce Clause has been found most available for
purposes of such legislation. Other clauses have, however, served their
turn. For example, the grant of power to lay taxes was utilized to
destroy an extensive industry obnoxious to the dairy interests--the
manufacture of oleomargarine artificially colored to look like
butter.[1] Also to invade the police power of the States in respect of
the regulation of the sale and use of narcotic drugs.[2] Also to check
speculation and extortion in the sale of theatre tickets![3] The power
to borrow money and create fiscal agencies was utilized to facilitate
the making of loans upon farm security at low rates of interest through
the incorporation of Federal land banks or Joint Stock land banks.[4]
[Footnote 1: _McCray v. United States_, 195 U.S., 27.]
[Footnote 2: Narcotic Drug Act. Held constitutional in _United States v.
Doremus_, 249 U.S., 86; _Webb v. United States_, 249 U.S., 96.]
[Footnote 3: Revenue Act of 1921, Title VIII, subdivisions 2 and 3.]
[Footnote 4: _Smith v. Kansas City Title Co._, 255 U.S., 180.]
It would be an insult to intelligence to claim that legislation such as
this, wearing the form of revenue measure or regulation of commerce but
in reality enacted with a different motive, does not involve an enormous
extension of the national power beyond what the makers of the
Constitution supposed they were conferring or intended to confer. What,
then, of the declaration by the Supreme Court with which we began, that
"to determine the extent of the grants of power we must place ourselves
in the position of the men who framed and adopted the Constitution, and
inquire what they must have understood to be the meaning and scope of
these grants." The answer must be that the Court itself has not always
adhered strictly to this test. The Court has taken the position that
when power exists under the Constitution to legislate upon a given
subject--say interstate commerce or taxation--it is not for the
judiciary to seek to correct abuses by Congress of that power, or to
question Congressional motives. As said in the decision sustaining the
constitutionality of the oleomargarine law:[1]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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