Roscoe Filburn, wheat, and regulations.

It is a possibility that you don't sit around the dining room table and discuss the 1942 US Supreme Court decision, Wickard v. Filburn... but maybe it is a conversation worth taking a hack at. Here is why...

After World War I, the agricultural South suffered major blows. The tariffs increased for overseas exporting, Germany was stuck dealing with the reparations from the war, Russian communism defected any outside products and competition, and Italy closed its markets. President FDR saw the strife in the agricultural regions of America and sought to change things. Executive and legislative branches of the US government passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. The act included an acreage allotment of farming land and the amount of crop harvested on those acres. The legislation was further amended in '38, instituting if you went over the quota you were subject to an increased penalty. This new piece of legislation, seeking to put constraints on the production of agriculture, let the door fly open for a governmental invasion to private businesses. Basically this act said the government can regulate all agricultural production on YOUR PRIVATE land. 

So a farmer from Ohio, Filburn, filed suit against the penalty fines he was being forced to pay through the amended act. His case reached the Supreme Court where the question of whether the government's interference was within the Commerce Clause. Filburn also attacked the act on its constitutionality because it penalized him for using the excess wheat to feed his farm animals. The usage of wheat as feed for a stock complicated the matter. So mainly the crop, wheat, that Filburn harvested above his acreage allotment was not intentionalized for interstate commerce, so should the government still have the right to penalize him for growing enough wheat to feed his stock, thus controlling THE TOTAL supply of wheat? Filburn argued that, "the  government's approach to the Commerce Clause would not only effectually approach a centralized government but could eventually lead to absolutism by successive nullifications of all Constitutional limitations." 

So here is what the USSC decided .... that the legislation was meant to control the price of wheat by sustaining or increasing  the demand by limiting the supply...hmm... Filburn's contribution to the demand for wheat is not enough to "remove him from the scope of federal regulation where, as here, his contribution, taken together what that of many others, is similarly situated." To sum it all up, the USSC used its gavel to hammer down the message that the power of Congress to regulate commodities, their prices, etc could no longer be questioned. Thus the Filburn principle was born.

So now in a modern world, we are faced with the strengthening of governmental regulations and red tape that force companies and small town Americans to spend countless dollars to not be penalized. Is this fair? The Warren and Burger Courts installed further action for protecting the Commerce Clause. It seems as if Congress wants anything passed they can just fall on the backs of the trusty commerce clause.

Give this wonderful research a quick read ! Jiim Chen, The Story of Wickard v. Filburn: Agriculture, Aggregation, and Commerce.