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The Most Important Supreme Court Case You Never Heard Of
Business Insider ^ | August 10, 2011 | Larry M. Elkin

Posted on 11/18/2018 4:35:18 PM PST by Neil E. Wright

One Supreme Court case stands behind the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Controlled Substances Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Civil Rights Act. It's been cited in rulings involving hot-button issues such as health care reform and medical marijuana. But chances are you've never heard of it.

Despite its wide-reaching influence, hardly anyone outside of legal circles is aware of the 1942 case, Wickard v. Filburn. One man, Gary Marbut of Missoula, Mont., hopes to change that. If Marbut succeeds, we'll also hear about another Supreme Court case: the one that overturns Wickard.

... snip ... The case was not about criminal rights, free speech or racial equality; it was about wheat.

In 1941, Roscoe Filburn planted 23 acres of wheat, despite regulations at the time that limited farmers to 11.1 acres of the crop. The regulations, established under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, were intended to support crop prices during the Great Depression. Congress's power under the Constitution's Commerce Clause to "regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes" justified the Act.

... snip ...

The Supreme Court disagreed. The court explained that, while Filburn's activities were not themselves commercial, in the aggregate, similar activities would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, since they would allow farmers to avoid purchasing wheat, possibly wheat from other states. Therefore, the court said, such activities needed to be subject to regulation for Congress to fully exercise its power over interstate commerce. Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote for the court, "Even if appellee's activity be local, and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce."

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: banglist; commerceclause; depression; fascism; grain; guns; interstatecommerce; scotus; scotuscase; whet; wickardvfilburn
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This is an old article, but with the new conservative majority on the Supreme Court, maybe it's ripe to be decided.
1 posted on 11/18/2018 4:35:18 PM PST by Neil E. Wright
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To: Neil E. Wright
One can hope.

The commerce clause makes no sense if everything is interstate commerce.

Everything has some influence on interstate commerce.

There has to be a line.The Supreme Court has refused to draw that line.

One could clearly argue that "gay marriage" has an influence on interstate commerce, so it can be regulated.

No one has made that argument, that I know of.

2 posted on 11/18/2018 4:40:29 PM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: marktwain

The catch-all clause. Very little in 1787 was interstate commerce or of a global nature.

Today the opposite is the case. Almost nothing we do or sell or buy is intrastate anymore.


3 posted on 11/18/2018 4:46:25 PM PST by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Neil E. Wright

How about NYT v Sullivan?


4 posted on 11/18/2018 4:47:05 PM PST by bankwalker (Immigration without assimilation is an invasion.)
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To: Neil E. Wright
I recall reading of a lawyer who wrote in 1942 that Wickard v. Filburn couldn't pass the giggle test. It still can't.
5 posted on 11/18/2018 4:52:08 PM PST by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: goldstategop

It helps to read the column. Lots.


6 posted on 11/18/2018 4:53:14 PM PST by Jacquerie (ArticleVBlog.com)
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To: Neil E. Wright

“The regulations, established under the Agricultural Adjustment Act, were intended to support crop prices during the Great Depression. ”

Ah yes, when Marxist state ruled agricultural price fixing was established in the US by FDR, may he rot in hell. My state’s old Senator, Snarlin’mArlen Specter (first R then D) was singlehanded responsible for much of the expansion of what is today considered as interstate commerce.

I would love to see this mess rolled back.


7 posted on 11/18/2018 5:32:34 PM PST by jdsteel (Americans are Dreamers too!!!)
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To: Neil E. Wright

I remember reading this case in law school and was like “WTF?”. Seriously one of the most ridiculous decisions ever.


8 posted on 11/18/2018 5:38:29 PM PST by gopno1
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To: Neil E. Wright

The Wickard v. Filburn decision makes as much sense as the Roe v. Wade decision. That is to say that neither make sense nor are they constitutional.


9 posted on 11/18/2018 6:06:59 PM PST by lakecumberlandvet (Appeasement never works.)
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To: Neil E. Wright

There was a similar case, Horne vs Dept of Agriculture, decided 8-1 overturning a similar law regarding raisins. The government was forcing raisin producers to sell some portion of their crop to use in federal programs and for price supports. I just googled to refresh my memory and that decision was limited to only raisins. I imagine that many of the same arguments would apply here.


10 posted on 11/18/2018 6:16:21 PM PST by monkeyshine
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To: lakecumberlandvet

The Wickard v. Filburn decision makes as much sense as the Roe v. Wade decision.


I respectfully disagree. Roe v. Wade at least was based on the idea that the right to be left alone by the government included a woman’s right to control whether she should have the right to not be pregnant. (I know that there is no right to be left alone in the Constitution, but you could say that that is the spirit of the document). I think they got Roe wrong, but I can at least follow the logic of the decision.

Wickard v. Filburn completely ignores the words and spirit of the constitution. Interstate commerce means business that crosses a state line. The court ruled that commerce or really lack of commerce that doesn’t cross a state line can still be considered ‘interstate commerce’ which doesn’t make any sense at all.

It would be wonderful for Wickard v. Filburn to be overturned if for no other reason than to watch the left’s heads explode over the shrinking of Federal government/Congress’s power.


11 posted on 11/18/2018 6:25:12 PM PST by hanamizu
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To: marktwain
Modern transportation and communications make a restrictive view of the Commerce Clause difficult to justify or apply in a reliable manner. Indeed, few economists today would disagree with the Court's reasoning in its unanimous opinion in Wickard that permitting wheat to be freely grown and processed into grain for animal feed for use on farms where it is grown would have no effect on the production and price of wheat placed into interstate commerce. And it should not be overlooked that the farmers in Wickard were free to grow wheat and use it as animal fodder so long as they did not separate the mature wheat heads and process them into grain as is used in commerce.

As for gay marriage, the Court's wretched Obergefell mandating gay marriage relied on the 14th Amendment, not the Commerce Clause.

12 posted on 11/18/2018 6:42:02 PM PST by Rockingham
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To: Neil E. Wright; All
Regarding Justice Robert H. Jackson, Business Insider did not mention that he was nominated by state sovereignty-ignoring socialist FDR, Justice Jackson completing FDR's state sovereignty-ignoring Supreme Court justice majority before Wickard v. Filburn was decided.

Regarding Wickard v. Filburn, regardless what FDR's activist majority justices wanted everybody to believe about the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3) they wrongly ignored the following imo.

They wrongly ignored that previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified the common sense interpretation of the Commerce Clause versus 10th Amendment-protected state powers when they scandalously decided Wickard v. Filburn in Congress's favor.

And not only had justices previously clarified relatively narrow limits on Congress's Commerce powers in Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824, but they also later referenced the 10th Amendment (10A) in United States v. Butler, 1936, to clarify that Congress's Commerce Clause powers were off limits to INTRAstate agricultural production.

So regardless what Justice Jackson and his colleagues wanted everybody to believe about the scope of Congress's Commerce Clause powers, using totally inappropriate terms like "concept" and "implicit" to describe that amendment, here is what was left of 10A by the time that FDR's state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices got finished with it.

"In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was "necessary and proper" to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept [???] of sovereignty thought to be implicit [??? emphases added] in the status of statehood." —Wickard v. Filburn, 1942

Thomas Jefferson had put it this way about judges.

Corrections, insights welcome.

13 posted on 11/18/2018 7:01:16 PM PST by Amendment10
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To: Neil E. Wright
That every schoolchild does not know about the wicked Wickard v. Filburn ruling is a mass indictment of the government school system in America.
14 posted on 11/18/2018 7:16:14 PM PST by backwoods-engineer (Enjoy the decline of the American empire.)
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To: Rockingham
few economists today would disagree with the Court's reasoning in its unanimous opinion in Wickard that permitting wheat to be freely grown and processed into grain for animal feed for use on farms where it is grown would have no effect on the production and price of wheat placed into interstate commerce.

Economists are *not* judges, nor should there opinions be used to make judicial decisions.

Taken at face value, *everything* affects interstate commerce, which renders the commerce clause void of meaning, if anything affecting interstate commerce may be regulated by the federal government.

My statement about "gay marriage" was to show the absurdity of the idea that the federal government has the right to regulate everything.

As late as 1995, in Lopez, the Supreme Court ruled, that for the commerce clause to have meaning, there has to be a limit on the reach of federal regulation.

In 2005, they reversed that with the Raich decision, on home grown marijuna. It was not Justice Scalia's finest hour.

15 posted on 11/18/2018 7:16:49 PM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries.)
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To: goldstategop

what I grow on my property and use at home should never be subject to interstate commerce regulations.


16 posted on 11/18/2018 7:19:31 PM PST by morphing libertarian (Use Comey's Report; Indict Hillary now. --- Proud Smelly Walmart Deplorable)
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To: marktwain
The expertise of economists is frequently relied on by trial courts in the form of reports and testimony. Moreover, a highly influential conservative school of legal scholarship known as "Law and Economics" has thoroughly demonstrated that appellate courts frequently consider how markets work when they make and explain their decisions.

The classic explanation of the broad view of the Commerce Clause power was by Chief Justice Marshall in 1824. The power to regulate Commerce is "the power to regulate; that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the Constitution." The absence of such limitations in the text of the Constitution itself is a key difficulty for textualists like Scalia.

Years ago, in law school, I was troubled by the contradictory views of the Commerce Clause and Wickard as set out in my casebook and in conservative literature, so I took several evenings to read the case thoroughly and the cases that it cited and relied on. I soon realized that the restrictive view of the Commerce Clause had long been in retreat due to the way that the country had been knitted together by modern technology. And the Commerce Clause had frequently been invoked against local monopolies and restraints of trade in state and local law.

17 posted on 11/18/2018 8:14:40 PM PST by Rockingham
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To: monkeyshine

That case was regarding market orders in which industry groups determined how much of a product a farmer could produce. Since that case, I believe the principle has been applied to most, of not all market orders. That case only applied to raisins because other crops weren’t at issue. I suspect lower federal courts have applied that decision to other farm products.


18 posted on 11/18/2018 8:22:21 PM PST by WASCWatch
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To: Neil E. Wright

Another case few living ever heard of - case grants Treaty Tribes superior Rights over all other US citizens

U.S. Supreme Court
WASHINGTON v. FISHING VESSEL ASSN., 443 U.S. 658 (1979)

443 U.S. 658

WASHINGTON ET AL. v. WASHINGTON STATE COMMERCIAL PASSENGER FISHING VESSEL
ASSOCIATION ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF WASHINGTON
No. 77-983.

Argued February 28, 1979.
Decided July 2, 1979.

[Footnote *] Together with Washington et al. v. Puget Sound Gillnetters Assn. et al., also on certiorari to the same court (see this Court’s Rule 23 (5)); and No. 78-119, Washington et al. v. United States et al., and No. 78-139, Puget Sound Gillnetters Assn. et al. v. United States District Court for the Western District of Washington (United States et al., Real Parties in Interest), on certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.


19 posted on 11/19/2018 1:49:53 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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To: hanamizu

I agree; the right to be left alone can be inferred from the 9th Amendment.

What is needed is official recognition that a baby in utero is a separate and distinct Human Being with his or her own set of Natural, Constitutional rights.


20 posted on 11/19/2018 2:00:35 AM PST by ExGeeEye (For dark is the suede that mows like a harvest.)
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