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by lainga 2987 days ago
I think you would be hard-pressed to find a layman who, when presented with the commerce clause, replied that he had inferred the Dormant Clause [0] or Civil Rights Act [1] from it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 - "... principally its power to regulate interstate commerce"

1 comments

I dunno. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Commerce among the states is Congress's domain, so state laws can't unduly interfere.
Its also been interpreted by the courts to mean that you cannot grow crops you consume yourself, because you would have purchased the crops otherwise and are affecting interstate commerce.

Whether or not you agree with that interpretation, it would take some willful ignorance to say that the plain text reading of regulating interstate commerce means you can regulate all commerce because you might have bought something from someone otherwise