Commerce in the Commerce Clause: A Response to Jack Balkin
Michigan Law Review First Impressions, Vol. 109, No. 55, 2010
8 Pages Posted: 7 Nov 2010 Last revised: 15 Apr 2014
Date Written: November 5, 2010
Abstract
The Constitution’s original meaning is its meaning to those ratifying the document during a discrete time period: from its adoption by the Constitutional Convention in late 1787 until Rhode Island’s ratification on May 29, 1790. Reconstructing it requires historical skills, including a comprehensive approach to sources. Jack Balkin’s article Commerce fails to consider the full range of evidence and thereby attributes to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause a scope that virtually no one in the Founding Era believed it had.
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