Posted on 11/03/2005 2:24:08 PM PST by inquest
There's a new poll up on the side. Do you think the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution authorizes federal laws against narcotics and firearms? Now lest everyone forget, this isn't asking whether you personally agree with such laws. It's about whether your honest reading of the Constitution can justify them.
While you're thinking it over, it might help to reflect on what James Madison had to say about federal power over interstate commerce:
Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged.I'll be looking forward to your comments.
So each DWI case should be judged individually?
Your question doesn't follow from my statement. Either you drove drunk, or you didn't. "Intent" doesn't really have much to do with it.
Is that a commerce clause question? If it ain't about commerce, your question is not relevant to the application of the clause.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition: "rather than"--
CONJUNCTION: And not
PREPOSITION: Instead of
In the context of Madison's letter on the power to regulate interstate commerce, do you think "rather than for the positive purposes of the general government..." means the power can be used for positive purposes of the general government?
Undecided/Pass here. I do not know enough about it.
Would you be so kind as to identify any product or activity which Congress does not have the authority to regulate?
On this specific issue, I don't see anything inconsistent with Scalia's judgement as it relates to original intent. Call it a wrongful expansion of the commerce clause, if you like. I see it as a rightful expansion of the commerce clause. I don't generally like hypotheticals, but lets turn the tables. Lets say in the early days of America, the Founders were faced with a national drug abuse problem. Remember, human beings are prone to habitual behavioral patterns, with drugs being a totally destructive habit. What would the Founders have done to address this issue?
I totally agree with John Locke's political theory or many call his philsophy when it comes to Social Contract. As for property rights, there have been all kinds of congressional legislation when it comes to property rights.
I might add, that even if this robust interpretation of the commerce clause is errant, it is so embeded in SCOTUS precedents, and meets every criteria there is for such precedent to be binding (expectations, reliance, not shocking to the conscience, workable, reflects the economics realities of a national economy, and national interests), unlike Roe, that the original intent argument no longer is dispositive.
I hope that helps.
The question is whether, from looking at that clause, you'd conclude that it can be understood to give Congress the power to regulate the ownership and sale of guns and narcotics when such sales don't cross state lines.
I don't think having one view about something that is not within the ambit of the commerce clause, and another with something that is, is inconsistent. I think you were throwing me a knuckle , to confuse and frustrate your opposition. Good try, but your pitch was outside the strike zone, and I didn't swing, so ball one. :)
Well if I am reading what you said right then I would say no. Defiently not guns. The gun laws here are tough enough already. We don't need the government trying to control gun ownership and sales.
You're using inconsistent criteria for interpreting two clauses. Legislative power over A is viewed to mean power over things that affect A, but legislative power over B is not viewed to mean power over things that affect B. If you can come up with a justification for this inconsistency, feel free to share it with the class.
They indirectly affect intersate commerce, even if the specific transaction does not cross state lines, and do so, in a big way. SCOTUS has so held, repeatedly, and for 60 years, and thus such regulation is within the ambit of Congress's commerce clause power, and those precedents will not be reversed under the test used to evaluate whether or not to overturn precedent.
Property rights originated with the people, not with Gummint. The law merely follows what is already going on in this matter. The true social contracts are not those unwritten things we are born into whether we care or not, but the actual social contracts between local groups, such as the mining associations claim protection that covered the West long before the FedGov got around to recognizing mining claims. The claim associations were careful to write their contracts in good legal language so FedGov could accept them as is. Locke's and his contemporaries' Social Contract idea do not work all that well anymore, if they ever did, in the Age of the Modern Corporation and Capitalism. Locke did not know what capital was, and, for that matter, neither did Marx, in spite of his incessant use of the term.
Great, so now all you have to do is find the section in the Constitution which gives Congress power to regulate things that indirectly affect interstate commerce.
Ansliner's failed integrity was major cause of marijuana prohibition. He is in agreement with you or, you with him,
I don't think interpreting two clauses differently is inconsistent at all. And in this case, one is designed to give power to Congress to preempt state laws, and the other is not. Your attempt to find similarity where none exists, except in some tortured sense to make a tendentious Sophistic argument, might serve to confuse a jury, but that is about the extent of its effectiveness. JMO of course.
You asked a question and demand an answer before you will clarify the terms it is framed in. If that's the kind of tactics you have to employ to make a case, then goodbye and good riddance.
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