When I said I didn't understand the details, I was referring to the possible application of the decision, to what the precise principle involved was and what the limitations on it were. I doubt you've got any clearer notion of what was involved.
Citing the mudflaps case was inept on your part. First of all, the decision didn't impose federal regulation on business or on the states. Even now, there are no federal regulations governing mudflaps on trucks.
Secondly, the Constitution clearly allows Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, and interstate trucking definitely is interstate commerce. Federal involvement in matters directly connected to interstate commerce isn't any kind of usurpation.
When boats and horse carts would have carried most interstate traffic, you wouldn't have found states or the federal government interfering in how wagons or sailboats were built, but clearly, safety does become a concern when powerful trains, trucks and planes are involved.
Third, you can't assume that the people who demanded enforcement of federal fugitive slave laws over the objection of state and local authorities was really in favor of "states rights."
And whatever the Confederate attitude toward state power was in 1860, you can't assume that it would still apply after 150 years. You can't assume that history would stop in 1860 and that the Confederate central government would let states have a free rein in all spheres of life and the economy.
But if history really did stop in 1860 and nothing changed since then one can assume by the same principle that you'd still have slavery and everything that went with it.
That decision - Bibb v Navajo Freight Lines - resulted in federal courts claiming jurisdiction over Illinois mudflap laws and resulted in Illinois mudflap laws being held unconstitutional because of . . . blah blah blah commerce clause.
Brings to mind the oral history of the Choctaws who had a saying that phonetically looks like: Katta achaffa olkut asuv ofi filvmisa.
Translated: When the guardian angel of life urinates on your flintlock rifle, you know your luck has done run out.
In that spirit, when the federal government - yes, the federal courts are one of the three branches - says the founding fathers intended to include mudflap oversight as a federal responsibility, then you know the Constitution of enumerated powers for the federal government has been effectively overthrown.
Who knows, at this rate maybe one day the federal government will claim a glancing geese federal wetlands rule, or a federal right to regulate scaffold toe boards, or a federal right to overturn state laws that define marriage as being between one man and one woman, or to overturn state laws that protect the unborn . . .
After you read the two million page Federal Register - or is it three million pages now - come back and remind me that the federal government has not usurped states’ rights.