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Letter: Reining in the Supreme Court

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The U.S. Constitution is a contract signed by the states limiting the national government to a few and limited enumerated powers, which should be interpreted as to the original intent. If you buy something and sign a contract as to the payments, you don’t expect the terms to be changed later on. So it is with our Constitution.

But that has been greatly undermined by the decisions of the Supreme Court. The court under Chief Justice John Marshall (the fourth chief justice, 1801-1835) made a ruling basically that the federal government can do anything the Constitution does not specifically bar it from doing. That would translate to it doesn’t say that the government can’t dictate where you live, therefore it can.

The Necessary and Proper Clause, also known as the Elastic Clause, has been misconstrued to apply to any and all things considered to be “proper,” totally ignoring that it applies only to the enumerated powers, but nothing...

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