Today in Supreme Court History: May 4, 1942

5/4/1942: Wickard v. Filburn argued.

Comments

[apedad]

Facts of the case
Filburn was a small farmer in Ohio who harvested nearly 12 acres of wheat above his allotment under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938. Filburn was penalized under the Act. He argued that the extra wheat that he had produced in violation of the law had been used for his own use and thus had no effect on interstate commerce, since it never had been on the market. In his view, this meant that he had not violated the law because the additional wheat was not subject to regulation under the Commerce Clause.

Question
Did the Act violate the Commerce Clause?

Conclusion
A unanimous Court upheld the law. In an opinion authored by Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson, the Court found that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the power to regulate prices in the industry, and this law was rationally related to that legitimate goal. The Court reasoned that Congress could regulate activity within a single state under the Commerce Clause, even if each individual activity had a trivial effect on interstate commerce, as long as the intrastate activity viewed in the aggregate would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To this extent, the opinion went against prior decisions that had analyzed whether an activity was local, or whether its effects were direct or indirect.

(oyez)

[DaivdBehar]

Big government jackasses making shit up to impose big government tyranny. Go back to Russia, you dirty Commies. Stalin Jr over there.

[DaivdBehar]

These dirty, tyrannical, Stalinist fucks needed to have looked up words in the dictionary, like interstate, and commerce.

[Queen Amalthea]

Reactionary? Yes.
Retarded? Yup.
Republican? Of course.

[Brett Bellmore]

Came after "the switch in time that saved 9", and after FDR had appointed 8 of the 9 justices. The interstate commerce clause had already been transformed into a general regulatory power by then, with only a pretextual reference to actual interstate commerce being required anymore.

[DaivdBehar]

That sick formula was extended to the waterways. A pond on a farm has water that traveled around the world, so it is part of US waterways, and subject to federal pollution regulation.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, some folks had to be dragged into modernity.

The text is ambiguous, but that function is *required* for a nation to function in the modern age.

[Bob from Ohio]

"function is *required*"

The US became the world's leading economy by 1900 without this so- called requirement.

[DaivdBehar]

And now, many nations are beating our ass in terms of GDP growth. Economic growth brings military power. China will dominate us and the world soon, thanks to the vile, lawyer traitor.

[Brett Bellmore]

It was 'necessary' to implement the sort of central planning that had become faddish in the mid 20th century. It wasn't until '74 that Myrdal and Hayek won the Nobel Prize in economics, in large part for proving that centrally planned economies weren't just wrecking things because it was incompetently done, but because it was just flat out impossible to do it competently for basic reasons.

[Queen Amalthea]

That Bob and his ilk are 100 years behind the times is not surprising.

[Brett Bellmore]

Your notion that history always and in every way proceeds in a good direction is interesting... in a clinical sense. But I'm at a loss for what would drive you to that thought.

Of course it's possible to take a wrong path, and be a century in correcting it.

[Queen Amalthea]

It's true I prefer modernity, I realize YMMV.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

The victors at the American marketplace of ideas:

Reason, progress, tolerance, modernity, science, education, inclusiveness

The losers at the American marketplace of ideas:

Backwardness, bigotry, ignorance, superstition, dogma, insularity, pining for illusory good old days

May the better ideas continue to win!

[Seamus]

Wickard Court: "There, I've finally stretched 'interstate commerce' to a limit that can't possibly be extended."

Raich Court: "Hold my beer."

[Currentsitguy]

Wickard, bar none, was the single worst decision to ever come out of the USSC. That, and the 17th Amendment, were the final nails in the coffin of the United States as envisioned by the Framers.

[Brett Bellmore]

There's so much competition for the worst ever Supreme court ruling.

Dred Scott, that ruled with no textual or historic basis at all that blacks could not be citizens.

The Slaugherhouse cases and other cases around then, when the Supreme court deliberately set out to render the 14th amendment moot, and largely succeeded for a century.

Wickard, when the interstate commerce clause was transformed into a grant of general regulatory power.

Kormatsu, where the Court signed off on ethnic based imprisonment and deprivation of property.

Honestly, I think Wickard is in the top six, but I'd be hard put to give it top billing with cases like Dred Scott and the Slaughterhouse cases competing.

[Dilan Esper]

Interesting that Mr. Originalist thinks SCOTUS should have invalidated Japanese internment. What clause imposes equal protection on the federal government? Substantive due process?

[not guilty]

Substantive due process was the rationale for (later) imposing equal protection obligations on the federal government in Bolling v. Sharpe.

[Dilan Esper]

I know. 🙂 (It's actually in the Korematsu opinion too- the Court holds the internment program satisfies equal protection but doesn't deny the concept applies to the federal government.)

But I suspect Brett hasn't thought this through. 🙂

[Queen Amalthea]

Can you imagine a person who walks around thinking the worst thing that happened was giving the people of the states (rather than career politicians) the right to choose their Senate representatives? This is where we're at now.

[Brett Bellmore]

Maybe it's just because I'm an engineer, but I tend to evaluate these things in terms of whether they work, not the feelings. The Constitution explicitly set out to counter ambition with ambition, set the interests of one part of government against another, so that they wouldn't unite against the people.

The 17th amendment did seriously break that scheme, even if it gives you the warm fuzzies.

[Krychek_2]

That depends on how you define "whether they work." You think it works because it's almost impossible to get anything done. Not everyone shares that assumption.

[Brett Bellmore]

“If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.” James Madison.

People who think of government as a benign institution tend to discount that latter necessity, because they assume that of course the government is trying to do good. But it's run by humans, and humans aren't all nice people, especially humans who actively seek positions of power over other people.

The majority of the people who died at the hands of governments in the 20th century died at the hands of their own governments. Government is hideously dangerous, and I think you haven't internalized that, haven't internalized that benign governance isn't a natural state of affairs, it's a highly unnatural state that can only be maintained by difficult work and constant vigilance, and never, ever trusting that government really means well.

Making sure things don't get done is as important as making sure things do get done. Because the downside of failing to make sure the wrong things don't get done is pretty terrifying indeed.

[Krychek_2]

Many children suffer horribly at the hands of their parents: incest, sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse. But you don't say that parents should be chained to the point of not being able to do things for their children. Rather, you put an outer limit on how badly parents are allowed to behave.

Religion has done lots and lots of horrible things; I don't even need to list them. Doesn't mean you chain religion so that it can barely breathe. Rather, it means there's an outer limit on the bad things it's allowed to do.

I get that government has done a lot of bad things. Doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't do good things.

Besides which, you haven't even tried to distinguish a benevolent government trying to bring better lives to people from bad government that sends people to the Gulag. I can assure you, they are different species, even though they may share a common ancestor.

Try holding government to the same standard you hold other hierarchical institutions, like religion and parenting. All of those institutions are run by humans and all of the will sometimes do bad things.

[Krychek_2]

And by the way, I find it odd that your determination to chain government seems to apply only to the federal government, while leaving the states free to, i.e., restrict a woman's reproductive rights. How is it that in your world people only need protection from the federal government?

[Queen Amalthea]

"The 17th amendment did seriously break that scheme"

That's ridiculous. The only 'scheme' it broke was where life long politicians got to choose Senators instead of the people in those states. I get you have faith in life long politicians to choose what's best for you, I don't. Thank goodness most Americans agreed with me and ratified the 17th.

[Currentsitguy]

The Senate was an essential part of the system of Checks and Balances. They never were intended to represent "The People". They were intended to represent the States' interests, which can differ than the people's. That's why there are two Houses.

The 17th Amendment was nothing but a big power grab by Washington.

[Hugo S. Cunningham]

Did the farmer sell the animals he raised with off-the-books grain on the open market? If so, he was not as insulated from interstate commerce as he claimed.