Criticism of The Doctrine
References in more recent Court decisions have argued that "Whether or not the Founders intended this "negative" or "dormant" component to the Commerce Clause has been hotly debated."
Both Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have rejected the notion of a Dormant Commerce Clause. Scalia believes that such a clause is inconsistent with his originalist interpretation of the Constitution. For example, the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution "reserve to the States respectively, or to the people" "he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States". If the delegation of a power to the federal government operated as a denial ("prohibit") of that power to the respective States, then every power "delegated to the United States by the Constitution" would also be a power "prohibited by it to the States respectively", such that the set of powers denied to the several States would entirely encompass the set of powers delegated to the federal government. This reading would render superfluous the Tenth Amendment's specific mention of powers denied to the government, thereby violating the canon of interpretation that, as most famously articulated by John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 174," t cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and therefore such construction is inadmissible, unless the words require it."
Read more about this topic: Dormant Commerce Clause
Famous quotes containing the words criticism of, criticism and/or doctrine:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“[N]o combination of dictator countries of Europe and Asia will halt us in the path we see ahead for ourselves and for democracy.... The people of the United States ... reject the doctrine of appeasement.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)