Let me stop you right there...
Here's a post I made in response to someone being wrong on Facebook... ;)
In particular, the notion that the Commerce Clause is an "enumerated power" therefore Federal vaccine mandates are "Constitutional".
Short version: No.
The Commerce Clause was never intended as a blank check for Congress to regulate any activity that crossed state lines. Indeed, they claim they can regulate activity that doesn't cross state lines AT ALL, but merely "affects" interstate commerce. As Justice Thomas pointed out in his concurrence in US v. Lopez, this would mean that Congress had essentially no limit on what it could do, and that the Federal Government was not one of enumerated powers, and make the States' retention of the "general police power" meaningless.
Put another way, the broad interpretation of that single phrase in Art 1, sec. 8 renders the entire remainder of the document a paper exercise and meaningless.
When the Constitution was ratified, the idea was to keep Virginia from enacting tariffs on goods from North Carolina, etc...not make tobacco illegal.
For a more thorough treatment of this topic, here's Prof. Randy Barnett's paper on the subject:
And here's Justice Thomas' concurrence in Lopez:
Comments
Post a Comment