Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 720.0

529US3

Unit: $U54

[10-04-01 09:35:40] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)

645

Souter, J., dissenting

dividual States see ﬁt. The legitimacy of the Court’s cur-
rent emphasis on the noncommercial nature of regulated
activity, then, does not turn on any logic serving the text
of the Commerce Clause or on the realism of the majority’s
view of the national economy. The essential issue is rather
the strength of the majority’s claim to have a constitutional
warrant for its current conception of a federal relation-
ship enforceable by this Court through limits on otherwise
plenary commerce power. This conception is the subject
of the majority’s second categorical discount applied today
to the facts bearing on the substantial effects test.

B

The Court ﬁnds it relevant that the statute addresses con-
duct traditionally subject to state prohibition under domestic
criminal law, a fact said to have some heightened signiﬁ-
cance when the violent conduct in question is not itself aimed
directly at interstate commerce or its instrumentalities.
Ante, at 609. Again, history seems to be recycling, for the
theory of traditional state concern as grounding a limiting
principle has been rejected previously, and more than once.
It was disapproved in Darby, 312 U. S., at 123–124, and held
insufﬁcient standing alone to limit the commerce power in
In the particular context of
Hodel, 452 U. S., at 276–277.
the Fair Labor Standards Act it was rejected in Maryland
v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183 (1968), with the recognition that
“[t]here is no general doctrine implied in the Federal Con-
stitution that the two governments, national and state, are
each to exercise its powers so as not to interfere with the
free and full exercise of the powers of the other.”
Id., at
195 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court held it
to be “clear that the Federal Government, when acting
within a delegated power, may override countervailing state
interests, whether these be described as ‘governmental’ or
‘proprietary’ in character.”
Ibid. While Wirtz was later
overruled by National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S.