The Commerce Clause
The New Deal and Redefining Commerce
Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935)
295 U.S. 495 (1935)
Decision: Affirmed in part and reversed in part
Vote: 9-0
Majority: Hughes, joined by Van Devanter, McReynolds, Brandeis, Sutherland, Butler, and Roberts
Concurrence: Cardozo, joined by Stone
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE HUGHES delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioners in No. 854 were convicted in the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of New York on eighteen count of an indictment charging violations of what is known as the “Live Poultry Code,” and on an additional count for conspiracy to commit such violations. By demurrer to the indictment and appropriate motions on the trial, the defendants contended (1) that the Code had been adopted pursuant to an unconstitutional delegation by Congress of legislative power; (2) that it attempted to regulate intrastate transactions which lay outside the authority of Congress, and (3) that, in certain provisions, it was repugnant to the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment …
A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corporation and Schechter Live Poultry Market are corporations conducting wholesale poultry slaughterhouse markets in Brooklyn, New York City … Defendants ordinarily purchase their live poultry … the West Washington Market in New York City or at the railroad terminals serving the City, but occasionally they purchase … Philadelphia. They buy the poultry for slaughter and resale. After the poultry is trucked to their slaughterhouse markets … it is there sold, usually within twenty-four hours, to retail poultry dealers and butchers who sell directly to consumers. The poultry purchased from defendants is immediately slaughtered, prior to delivery … Defendants do not sell poultry in interstate commerce.
The “Live Poultry Code” was promulgated under § 3 of the National Industrial Recovery Act. That section … authorizes the President to approve “codes of fair competition.” Such a code may be approved for a trade or industry, upon application by one or more trade or industrial associations or groups, if the President finds (1) that such associations or groups “impose no inequitable restrictions on admission to membership therein and are truly representative,” and (2) that such codes are not designed “to promote monopolies or to eliminate or oppress small enterprises and will not operate to discriminate against them, and will tend to effectuate the policy” of Title I of the Act. Such codes “shall not permit monopolies or monopolistic practices.” …
Where such a code has not been approved, the President may prescribe one, either on his own motion or on complaint. Violation of any provision of a code (so approved or prescribed) “in any transaction in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce” is made a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $500 for each offense, and each day the violation continues is to be deemed a separate offense.
The “Live Poultry Code” was