Handout D: Excerpts from U.S. v. Darby Lumber (1941)

Excerpts from U.S. v. Darby Lumber (1941)

Opinion by Justice Harlan Stone:

“The two principal questions raised by the record in this case are, first, whether Congress has constitutional power to prohibit the shipment in interstate commerce of lumber manufactured by employees whose wages are less than a prescribed minimum or whose weekly hours of labor at that wage are greater than a prescribed maximum, and, second, whether it has power to prohibit the employment of workmen in the production of goods “for interstate commerce” at other than prescribed wages and hours. A subsidiary question is whether, in connection with such prohibitions, Congress can require the employer subject to them to keep records showing the hours worked each day and week by each of his employees including those engaged “in the production and manufacture of goods, to-wit, lumber, for ‘interstate commerce…the only question arising under the commerce clause with respect to such shipments is whether Congress has the constitutional power to prohibit them.

While manufacture is not, of itself, interstate commerce, the shipment of manufactured goods interstate is such commerce, and the prohibition of such shipment by Congress is indubitably a
regulation of the commerce. The power to regulate commerce is the power to prescribe the rule by which commerce is governed…

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…

Such regulation is not a forbidden invasion of state power merely because either its motive or its consequence is to restrict the use of articles of commerce within the states of destination, and is not prohibited unless by other Constitutional provisions. It is no objection to the assertion of the power to regulate interstate commerce that its exercise is attended by the same incidents which attend the exercise of the police power of the states…

Whatever their motive and purpose, regulations of commerce which do not infringe some constitutional prohibition are within the plenary power conferred on Congress by the Commerce
Clause…

The reasoning and conclusion of the Court’s opinion there cannot be reconciled with the conclusion which we have reached, that the power of Congress under the Commerce Clause is plenary to exclude any article from interstate commerce subject only to the specific prohibitions of the Constitution…”