“A farmer once thought that a few acres of grain that he grew for personal consumption didn’t count as “interstate commerce.”
Wickard v. Filburn, 1942
The effect of that decision is that Congress may regulate a purely local activity if the cumulative effect of such activitiy is that it would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
What is the likelihood that this will be overturned in the near future?
The issue is that there is no natural nor Constitutionally-clear dividing line between “substantial” and “unsubstantial”. And the feds like it that way.
True, but as we all know, the ruling itself was faulty. The Supreme Court is not omnipotent! Congress (and not the SC) can REGULATE interstate commerce, but that commerce must first occur. Things in a state that have any effect on interstate commerce are none of the feds business, only the states.
Return power to the states where it belongs. The state legislature is (or should be) more responsive than some distant bureaucratic behemoth government.
That was my favorite bit of case law during my MBA program.
That convoluted thinking made me glad I chose business school over law school. To this day, I cannot have a reasoned argument with the lawyers in my family or my lawyer friends. Every damned one of the suborns logic to “precedent”.
Basically, the retarded kid turns in his test first, and from that point on, 1+1=7.
Go figure.