The Necessary and Proper Clause, Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 18:
The Congress shall have Power ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.It did not take long after the adoption of the Constitution for ambitious politicians to try to stretch this clause, leading to its early nickname, the "elastic clause".
This misconstruction in Wickard is not something new. It goes all the way back to McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819), which it cites as authority, and which contains the following passages:
The word "necessary" is considered as controlling the whole sentence, and as limiting the right to pass laws for the execution of the granted powers to such as are indispensable, and without which the power would be nugatory. ... Is it true that this is the sense in which the word "necessary" is always used? Does it always import an absolute physical necessity so strong that one thing to which another may be termed necessary cannot exist without that other? We think it does not. If reference be had to its use in the common affairs of the world or in approved authors, we find that it frequently imports no more than that one thing is convenient, or useful, or essential to another. To employ the means necessary to an end is generally understood as employing any means calculated to [p*414] produce the end, and not as being confined to those single means without which the end would be entirely unattainable.CJ John Marshall may have been correct that in common parlance "necessary" does not always mean essential. But it does in law, and in the common law tradition that provided the language of the Constitution, and the rule of construction that powers always be construed as narrowly as possible. This was the basis for both the wrong expansion of the meaning of "necessary" and for expansion of "carry into execution" from making an effort to getting a desired result. It is perhaps the single greatest error in constitutional construction in the history of the Supreme Court.
Five years later, in Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824), CJ Marshall further built on this with the passages:
This instrument contains an enumeration of powers expressly granted by the people to their government. It has been said that these powers ought to be construed strictly. But why ought they to be so construed? Is there one sentence in the Constitution which gives countenance to this rule? In the last of the enumerated powers, that which grants expressly the means for carrying all others into execution, Congress is authorized "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper" for the purpose. But this limitation on the means which may be used is not extended to the powers which are conferred, nor is there one sentence in [p*188] the Constitution which has been pointed out by the gentlemen of the bar or which we have been able to discern that prescribes this rule. We do not, therefore, think ourselves justified in adopting it.
The subject to be regulated is commerce, and our Constitution being, as was aptly said at the bar, one of enumeration, and not of definition, to ascertain the extent of the power, it becomes necessary to settle the meaning of the word. The counsel for the appellee would limit it to traffic, to buying and selling, or the interchange of commodities, and do not admit that it comprehends navigation. This would restrict a general term, applicable to many objects, to one of its significations. Commerce, undoubtedly, is traffic, but it is something more: it is intercourse.
All America understands, and has uniformly understood, the word "commerce" to comprehend navigation.
It is the power to regulate, that is, to prescribe the rule by which commerce is to be governed. This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution. ... the sovereignty of Congress, though limited to specified objects, is plenary as to those objects, the power over commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, is vested in Congress as absolutely as it would be in a single government, having in its Constitution the same restrictions on the exercise of the power as are found in the Constitution of the United States.Note this contains a logical error. That all commerce involves transport, and perhaps navigation, it does not follow that all navigation is commerce. That is taking the word "is" meaning "is a subset of" to mean "is equivalent to". CJ Marshall did not live in an era when people knew about set theory, but as one self-educated in the law, he also did not benefit from some sense of set theory that more advanced legal scholars of his time would have enjoyed.
Until this misconstruction is understood it is not easy to overcome it. Asserting the Tenth Amendment won't work unless we attack the notions that "necessary and proper" is to get a result and that the power to regulate is the power to do whatever it takes to get a result. See Draft Amendments.
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