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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Breyer, J., dissenting

original federalist understanding where the Commerce
Clause is at issue.

I

The majority holds that the federal commerce power
does not extend to such “noneconomic” activities as “non-
economic, violent criminal conduct” that signiﬁcantly affects
interstate commerce only if we “aggregate” the interstate
“effect[s]” of individual instances. Ante, at 617. Justice
Souter explains why history, precedent, and legal logic mili-
tate against the majority’s approach.
I agree and join his
opinion.
I add that the majority’s holding illustrates the dif-
ﬁculty of ﬁnding a workable judicial Commerce Clause touch-
stone—a set of comprehensible interpretive rules that courts
might use to impose some meaningful limit, but not too great
a limit, upon the scope of the legislative authority that the
Commerce Clause delegates to Congress.

A

Consider the problems. The “economic/noneconomic” dis-
tinction is not easy to apply. Does the local street corner
mugger engage in “economic” activity or “noneconomic” ac-
tivity when he mugs for money? See Perez v. United States,
402 U. S. 146 (1971) (aggregating local “loan sharking” in-
stances); United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 559 (1995)
(loan sharking is economic because it consists of “intrastate
extortionate credit transactions”); ante, at 610. Would evi-
dence that desire for economic domination underlies many
brutal crimes against women save the present statute? See
United States General Accounting Ofﬁce, Health, Education,
and Human Services Division, Domestic Violence: Preva-
lence and Implications for Employment Among Welfare Re-
cipients 7–8 (Nov. 1998); Brief for Equal Rights Advocates
et al. as Amicus Curiae 10–12.

The line becomes yet harder to draw given the need for
exceptions. The Court itself would permit Congress to ag-
gregate, hence regulate, “noneconomic” activity taking place