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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Souter, J., dissenting

833 (1976), that case was itself repudiated in Garcia v. San
Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U. S. 528
(1985), which held that the concept of “traditional govern-
mental function” (as an element of the immunity doctrine
under Hodel) was incoherent, there being no explanation
that would make sense of the multifarious decisions placing
some functions on one side of the line, some on the other.
469 U. S., at 546–547. The effort to carve out inviolable
state spheres within the spectrum of activities substantially
affecting commerce was, of course, just as irreconcilable with
Gibbons’s explanation of the national commerce power as
being as “absolut[e] as it would be in a single government,”
9 Wheat., at 197.14

14 The Constitution of 1787 did, in fact, forbid some exercises of the
commerce power. Article I, § 9, cl. 6, barred Congress from giving pref-
erence to the ports of one State over those of another. More strikingly,
the Framers protected the slave trade from federal
interference, see
Art. I, § 9, cl. 1, and conﬁrmed the power of a State to guarantee the
chattel status of slaves who ﬂed to another State, see Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3.
These reservations demonstrate the plenary nature of the federal power;
the exceptions prove the rule. Apart from them, proposals to carve
islands of state authority out of the stream of commerce power were
entirely unsuccessful. Roger Sherman’s proposed deﬁnition of federal
legislative power as excluding “matters of internal police” met Gouver-
neur Morris’s response that “[t]he internal police .
. ought to be in-
fringed in many cases” and was voted down eight to two. 2 Records
of the Federal Convention of 1787, pp. 25–26 (M. Farrand ed. 1911) (here-
inafter Farrand). The Convention similarly rejected Sherman’s attempt
to include in Article V a proviso that “no state shall . . . be affected in its
5 Elliot’s Debates 551–552. Finally, Rufus King sug-
internal police.”
gested an explicit bill of rights for the States, a device that might indeed
have set aside the areas the Court now declares off-limits. 1 Farrand 493
(“As the fundamental rights of individuals are secured by express pro-
visions in the State Constitutions; why may not a like security be provided
for the Rights of States in the National Constitution”). That proposal,
too, came to naught.
In short, to suppose that enumerated powers must
have limits is sensible; to maintain that there exist judicially identiﬁable
areas of state regulation immune to the plenary congressional commerce

.