Congress Power to Prohibit

Interstate Commerce: Congress Power to Prohibit Questioned

The question whether Congress's power to regulate commerce “among the several States” embraced the power to prohibit it furnished the topic of one of the most protracted debates in the entire history of the Constitution's interpretation, a debate the final resolution of which in favor of congressional power is an event of first importance for the future of American federalism. The issue was as early as 1841 brought forward by Henry Clay, in an argument before the Court in which he raised the specter of an act of Congress forbidding the interstate slave trade.1 The debate was concluded ninety-nine years later by the decision in United States v. Darby,2 which sustained the Fair Labor Standards Act.3

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References

This text about Congress Power to Prohibit is based on “The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation”, published by the U.S. Government Printing Office.

[Footnote 1] Groves v. Slaughter, 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 449, 488-89 (1841).

[Footnote 2] 312 U.S. 100 (1941).

[Footnote 3] The judicial history of the argument may be examined in the majority and dissenting opinions in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918), a five-to-four decision, in which the majority held Congress not to be empowered to ban from the channels of interstate commerce goods made with child labor, since Congress's power was to prescribe the rule by which commerce was to be carried on and not to prohibit it, except with regard to those things the character of which&emdash;diseased cattle, lottery tickets&emdash;was inherently evil. With the majority opinion, compare Justice Stone's unanimous opinion in United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100, 112-24 (1941), overruling Hammer v. Dagenhart. See also Corwin, The Power of Congress to Prohibit Commerce, 3 SELECTED ESSAYS ON CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 103 (1938).

Tables of Contents

• Congress Power to Prohibit and other Topics in the Contents – Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
• U.S. Constitutional Law Category
• List of amendments to the U.S. Constitution
• Congress Power to Prohibit and other Topics in the Constitution Contents
• Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution (Table of Contents)
• Clauses of the Constitution (Table of Contents)