The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
History
The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation: Annotations of Cases Decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to June 30, 1952
Constitutional law -- United States; Constitutions -- United States
From time to time the Court has said that certain things were not
interstate commerce, such as mining or manufacturing undertaken "with
the intent" that the product shall be transported to other States;[314]
insurance transactions when carried on across State lines;[315]
exhibitions of baseball between professional teams which travel from
State to State;[316] the making of contracts for the insertion of
advertisements in periodicals in another State;[317] contracts for
personal services to be rendered in another State.[318] Recent decisions
either overturn or cast doubt on most if not all of these holdings. By
one of these the gathering of news by a press association and its
transmission to client newspapers is termed interstate commerce.[319] By
another the activities of a Group Health Association which serves only
its own members are held to be "trade" within the protection of the
Sherman Act and hence capable, if extended, of becoming interstate
commerce.[320] By a third the business of insurance when transacted
between an insurer and an insured in different States is interstate
commerce.[321]
THE "NECESSARY AND PROPER" CLAUSE
In the majority of the above cases the commerce clause was involved
solely as a limitation on the powers of the States. But when the clause
is treated as a source of national power it is, of course, read in
association with the power of Congress "* * * To make all Laws which
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing
Powers, * * *,"[322] with the result that, as is pointed out later,
"interstate commerce" has come in recent years practically to connote
both those operations which precede as well as those which follow
commercial intercourse itself, provided such operations are deemed by
the Court to be capable of "affecting" such intercourse.[323]
"AMONG THE SEVERAL STATES"
In Cohens _v._ Virginia, decided in 1821, Marshall had asserted, "for
all commercial purposes we are one nation."[324] In Gibbons _v._ Ogden,
however, he conceded that the phrase commerce "among the several States"
was "not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the
completely interior traffic of a State"; and added: "The genius and
character of the whole government seem to be, that its action is to be
applied to all external concerns of the nation, and to those internal
concerns which affect the States generally; but not those which are
completely within a particular State, which do not affect other States,
and with which it is not necessary to interfere, for the purpose of
executing some of the general powers of the government."[325]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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