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

649

Souter, J., dissenting

“The wisdom and the discretion of Congress, their iden-
tity with the people, and the inﬂuence which their con-
stituents possess at elections, are, in this, as in many
other instances, as that, for example, of declaring war,
the sole restraints on which they have relied, to secure
them from its abuse. They are the restraints on which
the people must often rely solely, in all representative
governments.” Gibbons, 9 Wheat., at 197.

Politics as the moderator of the congressional employment
of the commerce power was the theme many years later in
Wickard, for after the Court acknowledged the breadth of
the Gibbons formulation it invoked Chief Justice Marshall
yet again in adding that “[h]e made emphatic the embracing
and penetrating nature of this power by warning that effec-
tive restraints on its exercise must proceed from political
rather than judicial processes.” Wickard, 317 U. S., at 120
(citation omitted). Hence, “conﬂicts of economic interest . . .
are wisely left under our system to resolution by Congress
under its more ﬂexible and responsible legislative process.
Such conﬂicts rarely lend themselves to judicial determi-
nation. And with the wisdom, workability, or fairness, of
the plan of regulation we have nothing to do.”
Id., at 129
(footnote omitted).

As with “conﬂicts of economic interest,” so with sup-
posed conﬂicts of sovereign political
interests implicated
by the Commerce Clause: the Constitution remits them to
politics. The point can be put no more clearly than the
Court put it the last time it repudiated the notion that
some state activities categorically deﬁed the commerce
power as understood in accordance with generally accepted
concepts. After conﬁrming Madison’s and Wilson’s views
with a recitation of the sources of state inﬂuence in the
structure of the National Constitution, Garcia, 469 U. S.,
at 550–552, the Court disposed of the possibility of identi-
fying “principled constitutional limitations on the scope of
Congress’ Commerce Clause powers over the States merely