Wickarrd v. Filburn is interesting in part because its logic does not match the facts.
If farmer Filburn had not threshed the excess wheat, he would not have been liable for the paltry tax, but his use of the unthresehd wheat for his own livestock would have had the same interstate effect that the illogical court used to justify its conclusion.
It wasn’t growing and consuming the wheat that triggered the tax - but it was growing and consuming the wheat that triggered the “interstate effect” that the decision depends on.
Court is a body of whim at this point. It hallucinates too. Lawyers study this illogic and apply it to current cases.
"the illogical court"
Thank you for your patience with this discussion.
Yes, the illogical court is one way to put it.
Another way to put it is what part of NO did FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices not understand about Congress’s intentionally limited Commerce Clause powers?
After all, not only had 19th century justices emphasized the already clear interpretation of Congress’s limited Commerce Clause powers, that Congress has NO power to regulate INTRAstate Commerce, but Justice Joseph Story had listed agriculture first in a list of otherwise “reasonable” powers that the Commerce Clause actually did not give to Congress.
I might have included the following in a previous post awhile back.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"Agriculture [emphasis added], colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments [emphasis added]." —"Justice Joseph Story, Commerce Clause (1.8.3), 1833.