Replies

"So anything that affects safety and welfare thereby affects interstate commerce, and can fall within the wide net of the commerce clause."

"Few and defined powers, as Mr. Madison promised?"

The Commerce Clause is but one of the powers granted to Congress. It's powerful, it has to be, but it is only one power.

"It is unnecessary to repeat what has frequently been said by this court with respect to the complete and paramount character of the power confided to Congress to regulate commerce among the several states. It is of the essence of this power that, where it exists, it dominates. Interstate trade was not left to be destroyed or impeded by the rivalries of local government. The purpose was to make impossible the recurrence of the evils which had overwhelmed the Confederation, and to provide the necessary basis of national unity by insuring 'uniformity of regulation against conflicting and discriminating state legislation."
-- Mr. Justice Hughes, The Shreveport Rate Cases (1914)

"Hey, isn't safety and welfare of the citizenry another way of saying the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State?"

Yes, but while safety and welfare is the role of the state, it is not the exclusive role of the state, especially when the threat to safety and welfare comes from without.

No, not "anything". The courts have ruled that, "Congress can certainly regulate interstate commerce to the extent of forbidding and punishing the use of such commerce as an agency to promote immorality, dishonesty, or the spread of any evil or harm to the people of other States from the State of origin."

And Justice Thomas has dissented that, Respondents Diane Monson and Angel Raich use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.

I think he was right about that.

Interstate trade was not left to be destroyed or impeded by the rivalries of local government.

Yes, but while safety and welfare is the role of the state, it is not the exclusive role of the state, especially when the threat to safety and welfare comes from without.

I fail to see how patients smoking pot under California law in California, or killing themselves with a doctor's assistance in Oregon under the medical laws of that state, will "destroy or impede interstate trade" or represent a "threat to my safety and welfare" way over here in Florida.