Overturn /Wickard v. Filburn/
/Wickard v. Filburn/ <http://supreme.justia.com/us/317/111/case.html>,
317 U.S. 111 (1942), was the Supreme Court case on which are based most
of the violations of the Constitution about which we complain. It
sustained the criminal prosecution of a farmer for consuming wheat he
had grown on his own farm, subjected to price and production controls,
on the doctrine that it had a "substantial effect" on interstate
commerce. It culminated more than a century of misinterpretation of the
Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses to unlawfully expand the
powers of the U.S. Government.
To protect their legislation from constitutional challenge in the
courts, Congress now routinely adds boilerplate language to almost every
important bill that "finds" the bill treats something that has a
"substantial effect" on interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court
routinely "defers" to the legislation if it contains such language.
This is how we get
*
Federal drug statutes (not laws, because unconstitutional statutes
are not laws)
*
Federal gun control statutes
*
Banking statutes and bailouts
*
Most federal criminal statutes, including those on fraud and tax
evasion
The case is now so entrenched in a mountain of precedents that about the
only was to overturn it is to adopt a clarifying amendment
http://constitution.org/reform/us/con_amend.htm
*Clarification of "commerce"*
"Commerce among the states" shall consist only of transfers of title
and possession of tangible commodities from a seller outside a state
to a purchaser inside that state. It shall not include extraction,
primary production, manufacturing, sale within a state, possession,
use, or disposal, nor shall it include the activities of those
engaged in such transfers. It shall not include energy, information,
or financial or contractual instruments.
*Clarification of "necessary and proper"*
A power shall be regarded as "necessary and proper" only if it is
essential to making the effort defined by an expressly delegated
power, not to do whatever may be convenient to get a desired result,
such as full compliance, for which the power might be exercised, and
then only in a manner that is reasonable for a proper public
purpose, and not abusive. The powers to tax, spend, promote,
regulate, and prohibit (or punish), shall each be construed as
distinct, with none implied by any of the others, and none shall be
exercised as a way to avoid the lack of a power to do one of the
others: Spending or taxing shall not be done to achieve a
regulatory, promotional, or punitive purpose for which there is
otherwise no delegated authority. Criminal prosecution shall not be
done to achieve a taxing, spending, promotional, or regulatory purpose.
*Rule of construction*
If there is any significant doubt concerning whether an official has
a power, or a person has an immunity from the exercise of a power,
the presumption shall be that the official does not have the power,
or conversely, that the person has the immunity.
Until we can formally adopt such amendments, we need to set up
Nullification Commissions in every state
http://constitution.org/reform/us/tx/nullification/nullcomm.htm
--
----------------------------------------------------------
Constitution Society http://constitution.org
2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322 Austin, TX 78757
512/299-5001 jon.rol...@constitution.org
----------------------------------------------------------
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
