The Legal Meaning of "Commerce" in the Commerce Clause

Robert G. Natelson (Montana), The Legal Meaning of "Commerce" in the Commerce Clause, 80 St. John's L. Rev. 789 (2006)

Download here.

I didn't feel the need to read the entire paper because the final forty or so pages seem to be a summary of the evidence that the legal meaning (as contrasted with the common/lay meaning) of "commerce" at the time of the Founding was precisely the same as the lay meaning: exchange, transport, etc. That is, the things that we've expanded "commerce" to include (manufacturing, e.g.) were not included in the meaning of "commerce" in the minds of the lawyers of the time any more than they were in the minds of the non-lawyers.

This is of course important because there were quite a large number of lawyers involved in the drafting of the Constitution.

The above isn't meant to slight the work done by Natelson, since it's clear he did a ton of work - he states, though, that every single source he read said the same thing: "commerce" has the meaning described above, and thus I felt that simply reading the conclusion was plenty for my purposes.

Interesting references

Randy E. Barnett (Georgetown), The Original Meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause, 6 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 183 (2003).