the Tenth Amendment in Constituiton
During the twenty years following Hammer v. Dagenhart, a variety of measures designed to regulate economic activities, directly or indirectly, were held void on similar grounds. Excise taxes on the profits of factories in which child labor was employed, on the sale of grain futures on markets which failed to comply with federal regulations, on the sale of coal produced by nonmembers of a coal code established as a part of a federal regulatory scheme, and a tax on the processing of agricultural products, the proceeds of which were paid to farmers who complied with production limitations imposed by the Federal Government, were all found to invade the reserved powers of the States.
In Schechter Corp. v. United States, the Court, after holding that the commerce power did not extend to local sales of poultry, cited the Tenth Amendment to refute the argument that the existence of an economic emergency justified the exercise of what Chief Justice Hughes called ”extraconstitutional authority.”
In 1941, the Court came full circle in its exposition of this Amendment. Having returned four years earlier to the position of John Marshall when it sustained the Social Security Act and National Labor Relations Act, it explicitly restated Marshall’s thesis in upholding the Fair Labor Standards Act in United States v. Darby.
Speaking for a unanimous Court, Chief Justice Stone wrote: ”The power of Congress over interstate commerce ‘is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution.’ That power can neither be enlarged nor diminished by the exercise or non- exercise of state power. It is no objection to the assertion of the power to regulate interstate commerce that its exercise is attended by the same incidents which attended the exercise of the police power of the states.
Our conclusion is unaffected by the Tenth Amendment which states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.”
