WICKARD v. FILBURN 317 U.S. 111 (1942)

In 1941, by an amendment to the agricultural adjustment act of 1938, Congress brought the national power to regulate the economy to a new extreme, yet the Supreme Court unanimously sustained the regulation in a far-reaching expansion of the commerce power. The price of wheat, despite marketing controls, had fallen. A bushel on the world market in 1941 sold for only forty cents as a result of a worldwide glut, and the wheat in American storage bins had reached record levels. To enable American growers to benefit from government fixed prices of $1.16 per bushel, Congress authorized the secretary of agriculture to fix production quotas for all wheat, even that consumed by individual growers. Filburn sowed twenty-three acres of wheat, despite his quota of only eleven, and produced an excess of 239 bushels for which the government imposed a penalty of forty-nine cents a bushel. Filburn challenged the constitutionality of the statute, arguing that it regulated production and consumption, both local in character; their effects upon interstate commerce, he maintained, were "indirect."

Justice robert h. jackson for the Court wrote that the question would scarcely merit consideration, given united states v. darby (1941), "except for the fact that this Act extends federal regulation to production not intended in any part for commerce but wholly for consumption on the farm." The Court had never before decided whether such activities could be regulated "where no part of the product is intended for interstate commerce intermingled with the subjects thereof." Taking its law on the scope of the commerce power from gibbons v. ogden (1824) and the shreveport doctrine, the Court repudiated the use of mechanical legal formulas that ignored the reality of a national economic market; no longer would the reach of the commerce clause be limited by a finding that the regulated activity was "production" or its economic effects were "indirect." The rule laid down by Jackson, which still controls, is that even if an activity is local and not regarded as commerce, "it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as 'direct' or 'indirect."' (See effects on commerce.)

How could the wheat grown by Filburn, which he fed to his own animals, used for his own food, and kept for next year's seed, be regarded as having a "substantial economic effect" on interstate commerce? Wheat consumed on the farm by its growers, the government had proved, amounted to over twenty percent of national production. Filburn consumed a "trivial" amount, but if he had not produced what he needed for his own use in excess of his allotted quota, he would have had to buy it. By not buying wheat, such producer-consumers depressed the price by cutting the demand. His own contribution to the demand for wheat was trivial, but "when taken with that of others similarly situated," it was significant. Congress had authorized quotas to increase the price of the commodity; wheat consumed on the farm where grown could burden a legitimate congressional purpose to stimulate demand and force up the price. Thus, even if a single bushel of Filburn's infinitesimal production never left his farm, Congress could reach and regulate his activity, because all the Filburns, taken collectively, substantially affected commerce.

Leonard W. Levy
(1986)

Bibliography

Stern, Robert L. 1946 The Commerce Clause and the National Economy, 1933–1946. Harvard Law Review 59:901–909.