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UNITED STATES v. MORRISON

Souter, J., dissenting

United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S., at 603 (dissenting opinion).
In the half century following the modern activation of the
commerce power with passage of the Interstate Commerce
Act in 1887, this Court from time to time created categorical
enclaves beyond congressional reach by declaring such activ-
ities as “mining,” “production,” “manufacturing,” and union
membership to be outside the deﬁnition of “commerce” and
by limiting application of the effects test to “direct” rather
than “indirect” commercial consequences. See, e. g., United
States v. E. C. Knight Co., 156 U. S. 1 (1895) (narrowly con-
struing the Sherman Antitrust Act in light of the distinction
between “commerce” and “manufacture”); In re Heff, 197
U. S. 488, 505–506 (1905) (stating that Congress could not
regulate the intrastate sale of liquor); The Employers’ Lia-
bility Cases, 207 U. S. 463, 495–496 (1908) (invalidating law
governing tort liability for common carriers operating in
interstate commerce because the effects on commerce were
indirect); Adair v. United States, 208 U. S. 161 (1908) (hold-
ing that labor union membership fell outside “commerce”);
Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U. S. 251 (1918) (invalidating
law prohibiting interstate shipment of goods manufactured
with child labor as a regulation of “manufacture”); A. L. A.
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, 545–
548 (1935) (invalidating regulation of activities that only
“indirectly” affected commerce); Railroad Retirement Bd.
v. Alton R. Co., 295 U. S. 330, 368–369 (1935) (invalidating
pension law for railroad workers on the grounds that con-
ditions of employment were only indirectly linked to com-
merce); Carter v. Carter Coal Co., 298 U. S. 238, 303–304
(1936) (holding that regulation of unfair labor practices in
mining regulated “production,” not “commerce”).

Since adherence to these formalistically contrived conﬁnes
of commerce power in large measure provoked the judicial
crisis of 1937, one might reasonably have doubted that
Members of this Court would ever again toy with a return
to the days before NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.,