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
"Jefferson's Embargo" of 1807-1808, which cut all trade with Europe, was
attacked on the ground that the power to regulate commerce was the power
to preserve it, not the power to destroy it. This argument was rejected
by Judge Davis of the United States District Court for Massachusetts in
the following words: "A national sovereignty is created [by the
Constitution]. Not an unlimited sovereignty, but a sovereignty, as to
the objects surrendered and specified, limited only by the
qualifications and restrictions, expressed in the Constitution. Commerce
is one of those objects. The care, protection, management and control,
of this great national concern, is, in my opinion, vested by the
Constitution, in the Congress of the United States; and their power is
sovereign, relative to commercial intercourse, qualified by the
limitations and restrictions, expressed in that instrument, and by the
treaty making power of the President and Senate. * * * Power to
regulate, it is said, cannot be understood to give a power to
annihilate. To this it may be replied, that the acts under
consideration, though of very ample extent, do not operate as a
prohibition of all foreign commerce. It will be admitted that partial
prohibitions are authorized by the expression; and how shall the degree,
or extent, of the prohibition be adjusted, but by the discretion of the
National Government, to whom the subject appears to be committed? * * *
The term does not necessarily include shipping or navigation; much less
does it include the fisheries. Yet it never has been contended, that
they are not the proper objects of national regulation; and several acts
of Congress have been made respecting them. * * * [Furthermore] if it be
admitted that national regulations relative to commerce, may apply it as
an instrument, and are not necessarily confined to its direct aid and
advancement, the sphere of legislative discretion is, of course, more
widely extended; and, in time of war, or of great impending peril, it
must take a still more expanded range. Congress has power to declare
war. It, of course, has power to prepare for war; and the time, the
manner, and the measure, in the application of constitutional means,
seem to be left to its wisdom and discretion. * * * Under the
Confederation, * * * we find an express reservation to the State
legislatures of the power to pass prohibitory commercial laws, and, as
respects exportations, without any limitations. Some of them exercised
this power. * * * Unless Congress, by the Constitution, possess the
power in question, it still exists in the State legislatures--but this
has never been claimed or pretended, since the adoption of the federal
Constitution; and the exercise of such a power by the States, would be
manifestly inconsistent with the power, vested by the people in
Congress, 'to regulate commerce.' Hence I infer, that the power,
reserved to the States by the articles of Confederation, is surrendered
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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