Regular readers in this forum might remember previous discussion of the 70-year-old U.S. Supreme Court case Wickard v. Filburn. The case crops up again in the latest issue of The Atlantic, cited by Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski as “the most important Supreme Court case no one’s ever heard of.”
The Court’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn—a 1942 case about a farmer who grew more wheat than the law allowed—led to a vast expansion of federal power, and was heavily relied on by those arguing last year that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional.
A case that helped pave the way for Obamacare? No wonder Wickard ended up on the list of the “dirty dozen” decisions rated among the worst ever handed down by the nation’s highest court.
