The Constitutionality of Federal Legislation Concerning Employer and Employee Engaged in Interstate and Foreign Commerce

Authors

Carl V. Wisner

Abstract

To what extent does the relation of employer and employee, when engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, come within the regulating power of Congress? The power of Congress to legislate concerning employer and employee, where the service is rendered in interstate or foreign commerce, has been recently questioned in several important Federal decisions. The ground on which such legislation has been challenged is that it is an attempt by Congress to regulate what is not commerce, that "creating new liabilities growing out of the relations of master and servant on the one hand and regulating commerce on the other are two things so entirely different that confusion of the judicial mind upon them is hardly to be expected under normal conditions. In the opinion of the Court the act does not regulate commerce among the States. While Congress seems to have desired in this instance to exert the power given by the Constitution for that purpose, it in fact regulated something which is not commerce at all."

Recommended Citation

Carl V. Wisner, The Constitutionality of Federal Legislation Concerning Employer and Employee Engaged in Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 5 Mich. L. Rev. 639 (1907).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol5/iss8/3