Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 714

529US3

Unit: $U54

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

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

639

Souter, J., dissenting

merates the powers of Congress, including the commerce
power, an enumeration implying the exclusion of powers not
enumerated.
It follows, for the majority, not only that there
must be some limits to “commerce,” but that some particular
subjects arguably within the commerce power can be identi-
ﬁed in advance as excluded, on the basis of characteristics
other than their commercial effects. Such exclusions come
into sight when the activity regulated is not itself com-
mercial or when the States have traditionally addressed it in
the exercise of the general police power, conferred under the
state constitutions but never extended to Congress under
the Constitution of the Nation, see Lopez, 514 U. S., at 566.
Ante, at 615–616.

The premise that the enumeration of powers implies that
other powers are withheld is sound; the conclusion that
some particular categories of subject matter are therefore
presumptively beyond the reach of the commerce power is,
however, a non sequitur. From the fact that Art. I, § 8, cl. 3,
grants an authority limited to regulating commerce, it fol-
lows only that Congress may claim no authority under that
section to address any subject that does not affect commerce.
It does not at all follow that an activity affecting commerce
nonetheless falls outside the commerce power, depending
on the speciﬁc character of the activity, or the authority
of a State to regulate it along with Congress.12 My dis-

rights against federal infringement, it did not, with the possible exception
of the Second Amendment, offer any similarly speciﬁc protections to areas
of state sovereignty.

12 To the contrary, we have always recognized that while the federal
commerce power may overlap the reserved state police power, in such
cases federal authority is supreme. See, e. g., Lake Shore & Michigan
Southern R. Co. v. Ohio, 173 U. S. 285, 297–298 (1899) (“When Congress
acts with reference to a matter conﬁded to it by the Constitution, then
its statutes displace all conﬂicting local regulations touching that matter,
although such regulations may have been established in pursuance of a
power not surrendered by the States to the General Government”); United
States v. California, 297 U. S. 175, 185 (1936) (“[W]e look to the activities