e of Sec. 9 of
article I of the Constitution interdicting a prohibition of the slave
trade till 1808. This clause clearly proves that those who framed the
Constitution perceived that "under the power of regulating commerce,
Congress would be authorized to abridge it, in favour of the great
principles of humanity and justice." Fed. Cas. No. 16,700, 614, 621
(1808).

The embargo, to be sure, operated on foreign commerce; but that there is
any difference between Congress's power in relation to foreign and to
interstate commerce the advocates of the view under consideration
denied. The power to "regulate" is the power which belongs to Congress
as to the one as well as to the other; and if this comprehends the power
to prohibit in the one case, it must equally, by acknowledged principles
of statutory construction, comprehend it in the other case as well. Nor
in fact, the argument continued, does it make any difference, by
approved principles of statutory construction, what purposes the framers
of the Constitution may have immediately in mind when they gave Congress
power to regulate commerce among the States; the governing consideration
is that they gave Congress the power, to be exercised in accordance with
its judgment of what are proper occasions for its use. "The reasons
which may have caused the framers of the Constitution to repose the
power to regulate interstate commerce in Congress do not, however,
affect or limit the extent of the power itself." Justice Peckham for the
Court in Addyston Pipe & Steel Co. _v._ United States, 175 U.S. 211, 228
(1899).

References

_See_ especially the arguments of counsel In re Rapier, 143 U.S. 110
(1892); Champion _v._ Ames (Lottery Case), 188 U.S. 321 (1903); Hammer
_v._ Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918); 3 Selected Essays on Constitutional
Law, 103, 138, 165, 295, 314, 336. Indeed, regulation of interstate
commerce by Congress may take the form of a positive adoption by it of a
regime of State regulation in the form of statutes (e.g., pilotage) or
of administrative regulations in some degree (as in the Motor Carrier
Act of 1935); or Congress may "regulate" through the device of
divestment of a subject matter of its interstate character, thus
indirectly causing State laws to apply, as was done by the Wilson Act of
1890 in respect to intoxicating liquors, or by the McCarran Act of 1945
following the United States _v._ South-Eastern Underwriters Association,
322 U.S. 533 (1944), in r