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by seisvelas 2136 days ago
Gibbons v. Ogden was about Congress's right to regulate interstate commerce, not intrastate commerce.

The massive expansion and erosion of the meaning of interstate commerce didn't begin until Wickard v Filburn in 1942.

3 comments

Gibbons v Ogden was about New York's granting of a monopoly on all steamboat services within New York, and the ruling held that "Commerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior"--in other words, that the right to regulate interstate commerce necessarily intrudes on the right to regulate intrastrate commerce to some degree.

Wickard v Filburn held that the Commerce Clause extends to regulating the growing of wheat for personal consumption, that involved no commercial transactions whatsoever.

Ah, good thing the internet stops at each state's borders.
If the framers of the constitution had intended for the federal government to have unlimited regulatory authority, they wouldn't have referred to Interstate Commerce. They would've just said: the federal government can do whatever it wants.

Redefining "interstate" is a mistake that one would hope that at least libertarian conservatives (who deliberately avoid expansionary scope creep without limit) would oppose.