Gibbons v. Ogden · ¶28

. Comprehensivo as the word “ among” is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than -one. The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the completely interior traffic of a State, because it is not an apt phrase for that purpose; and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce,., to which the power was to be extended, would ndt have been made,.had the inten-tioii been to extend the.power, to ¿very deseription. The enumeration presupposes something not enumerated; and that something,. if we regard the language or the subject of the sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of a State. The genius and character of the whole government seem to be, that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the States generally; but not to…

U. S. Reports, bound volume
U. S. Reports, volume 22, at 1 (Library of Congress) · transcription: Caselaw Access Project
Passage preview. Read in context for the complete text, notes and references.