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Article: Commerce Clause
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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COMMERCE CLAUSE
COMMERCE CLAUSE.
The judicial history of the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution (Article I, section 8, paragraph 3) can be divided into three eras: the first 150 years after the Constitution went into effect in 1789; the 1937
–
1995 period; and 1995 and beyond.
Gibbons v. Ogden
(1824) defined the first era. In that case, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote for the Supreme Court that commerce encompassed "every species of commercial intercourse" and that if Congress had legislated in the area, federal power was plenary. Such breadth did not make the unimplemented power exclusive, however, and it was ultimately the Court, under Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, that ...