Today in Supreme Court History: November 9, 1942

11/9/1942: Wickard v. Filburn decided.

The Stone Court (1941-1942)

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc., 510 U.S. 17 (decided November 9, 1993): Title VII claimant ("abusive work environment") need not show that her psychological well-being was "seriously affected"; totality of circumstances but still must be "objectively" abusive (ALJ found supervisor made frequent gender insults, sexual innuendos, "You're a woman, what do you know", "We need a man as the rental manager", "you're a dumb ass woman", suggested "we go to the Holiday Inn", asked her to get coins from his front pocket, etc., etc.)

Wickard v. Fillburn, 317 U.S. 111 (decided November 9, 1942): Congress can regulate amount of wheat farmer grows for his own consumption because it takes away from what he might sell in interstate commerce (my Con Law professor said this case was "the final nail in the coffin" of the Restricted Commerce Clause era, but he was saying this in 1991; the coffin has since popped open)

Ex Parte U.S. Joins, 191 U.S. 93 (decided November 9, 1903): the Court has no power to annul decisions of "Citizenship Court" set up by Congress (against the wishes of Oklahoma tribes) to break up their communal land and sell to individuals; the court had already ceased to exist, having performed its only legislated function

[Ghost of Patrick Henry]

Wickard is still the most blatant power grab by the Court in history. Changed us from a Republic to a Oligarchy. The Anti-Federalists proven right, again. God bless George Mason and Patrick Henry.

[Sarcastr0]

A U.S. without Wickard is not a modern nation.

[Dan Schiavetta]

This is quite true. I don't know of any advanced nation without a dominant central government that can make decisions like the one at issue in Wickard.

[Ed Grinberg]

9 out of 10 statists agree!

[Bob from Ohio]

"A U.S. without Wickard is not a modern nation."

US was already the world's largest economy before Wickard. How did we manage that without an unchecked federal government?

[apedad]

How have we managed to remain the world's largest economy after Wickard?

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, 1940 economics working okay in the midst of Europe tearing itself apart means they should work fine today.

What an awful argumen.

[jdgalt1]

Then no nation worth living in is “modern” according to Sarcastr0.

Any justices true to their oaths would have told Congress it must amend the Constitution to produce such a result legally.

And such an amendment, if it ever happens, will destroy the essential character of the US as a federation. In the meantime we need a court with the courage to rule that Wickard is unconstitutional, and always has been.

[Sarcastr0]

What nation existing today do you think is worth living in, jgalt?

[apedad]

Re: Wickard v. Filburn

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 (Unanimous!)

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)

[Dan Schiavetta]

The photo says it all. Black had only been there five years and he’s already sitting right next to the C.J.

[Bob from Ohio]

"above his allotment"

Comrade, you have exceeded your allotment! We shall levy a fine you cannot pay, you hoarder.

[Sarcastr0]

Ah yes, 1942, the day America became Communist.

[Brett Bellmore]

Authoritarian government with central planning was all the rage at the time, as I'm sure you're aware. People thought some flavor of fascism or communism was the way of the future.

WWII kind of soured people on that notion for a while. Then some people got the stupid idea that computers made the knowledge problem go away.

[Sarcastr0]

Wickard was not a communist decision, nor a fascist one.

Computers haven't made people think communism nor fascism is a good idea in America.

Quit calling everything communist.

[Mr. Bumble]

Seems like the act was an example of the top down control favored by FDR to get the US out of the Depression. Was Willard the first case brought for violating the act and did WWII act as a justification for the decision (along with the later Korematsu decision)?

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Not first by a long shot. Some of FDR's programs were shot down within a year or two.

[Brett Bellmore]

They stopped being shot down after he threatened the Court with packing. And then our first President for Life got to replace enough of the Court with yes men that it stopped being a factor.

[Sarcastr0]

Despite the Switch in Time line, the Court's decisions had been made before that bill was announced; historians think it was just a divided court with a swing Justice in Roberts.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Roberts had decided to "switch" before the court packing plan was announced; in December 1936 he voted in conference with the more liberal justices in the West Coast Hotels v. Parrish case. Supposedly C.J. Hughes came to him in November 1936 after FDR's landslide and suggested that the Court was losing credibility if it didn't change.

[John F. Carr]

I have a pitchfork. I need a helper with a torch and another with a time machine.

[Bob from Ohio]

"Wickard v. Fillburn, 317 U.S. 111 (decided November 9, 1942)"

A black day. The end of the limited federal government created by the Founding Fathers.

[Sarcastr0]

That was the Civil War Amendments, Bob. And good riddance.

[apedad]

And yet it was the Founding Fathers who inserted the Commerce Clause in the unamended Constitution.

(Bob here's a secret so don't tell anyone. . . some of the Founding Fathers actually wanted a strong[er] federal government because they saw the Articles of Confederation were not sustainable for our nation.

In a letter signed by George Washington after being unanimously endorsed by the Constitutional Convention, he wrote:

"The friends of our country have long seen and desired, that the power of making war, peace, and treaties, that of levying money and regulating commerce, and the correspondent executive and judicial authorities should be fully and effectually vested in the general government of the Union . . .

It is obviously impractical in the federal government of these states, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all. . .

In all our deliberation on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union . . ."

Nowhere does it say: “our goal was to make the federal government as small as possible.”)

[Brett Bellmore]

It was quite possible for them to have thought they undershot with the Articles, and yet not aim for the Moon with the Constitution.

[Dan Schiavetta]

They deliberately left things vague and general because they were planning on the document being in force for a long time and they knew that the United States would greatly and quickly expand. These were well-informed men who also knew that things were changing in the worlds of science and human affairs, and they did not want to overly bind future generations. I doubt if even William Paterson would hold to his view of a weak central government if he knew what the world is like now and what the United States needs to be like to be able to compete in it.

[jdgalt1]

Nowhere does it say: “our goal was to make the federal government as small as possible.”)

It implies it. Federalist #45 went so far as to promise: "The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States. There will consequently be less of personal influence on the side of the former than of the latter."

[Dan Schiavetta]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/204535/number-of-governmental-employees-in-the-us/

There are in total about seven times as many state employees as federal employees. So in any state for every one federal employee there will be seven state employees. This would surprise most Republicans who think of the federal government as a behemoth that dwarfs the state government. Though if you go by "each particular state", divide the number of state employees by 50 (states), you get each state having about one-seventh the number of employees as the total federal government.