On the Commerce Clause

An excerpt from The Constitution of the United States: A Critical Discussion of its Genesis, Development, and Interpretation.

John Randolph Tucker, LL.D. (1823-1897)
Edited by Henry St. George Tucker (1853-1932)
Published 1899 by Callaghan, Chicago, IL
Reprinted 1981 by Rothman, Littleton, CO

Volume 2, Pp. 525-6, Para. 254

"(d) By later cases the power gas been extended to embrace contracts as to things in commerce, as correspondence by telegraph, etc. These telegraphs were long since invemted, but as they were new means of commerce of persons and things, the power embraces commerce through those means as it had done through the old and superceded means. The power is not changed by the increase of its domain by reasons of the advance of scientific investigation.1 In regulating commerce, therefore, Congress regulates traffic in things, vehicles of transport, and things !in transitu!, but not the things themselves. Before and after the !transitus! they are beyond this power of regulation. The production and use of things in the !terminus a quo! and the !terminus ad quem! are not subjects of the commercial power, but of the law of the State or country from which and to which they are transported.2

1 Mobile v. Kimball, 102 US 690; W.U.Tel.Co. v. Alabama, 132 id. 472

2 Brown v. Maryland, 12 Wheat 419; Waring v. Mayor, 8 Wall. 110; In re Nagle 135 US 1; Royall v. Virginia, 116 id. 572;
Nashville v. Alabama, 128 id. 100.