The Framers junked the states-rights-oriented Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution because they wanted to solve the nation's problems.
Founding Pragmatists
Led by James Madison and George Washington, the drafters of the Constitution crafted a profoundly pragmatic document, filled not only with political compromises to pull together the 13 squabbling states but looking for practical solutions to address the challenges of a new, sprawling and disparate nation.
The Commerce Clause, which grants Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce, was not some afterthought but rather one of Madison's most cherished ideas, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her opinion on behalf of the Court's four more liberal members.
Citing a 1983 ruling entitled EEOC v. Wyoming, Ginsburg noted that "the Commerce Clause, it is widely acknowledged, "was the Framers' response to the central problem that gave rise to the Constitution itself.'"
That problem was a lack of national coordination on economic strategy, which hindered the country's development and made the nation more vulnerable to commercial exploitation by European powers, which looked to divide and weaken the newly independent United States.
Ginsburg wrote: "Under the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution's precursor, the regulation of commerce was left to the States. This scheme proved unworkable, because the individual States, understandably focused on their own economic interests, often failed to take actions critical to the success of the Nation as a whole."
The Articles of Confederation, which governed the country from 1777 to 1787, had explicitly asserted the "independence" and "sovereignty" of the 13 individual states, making the central government essentially a supplicant to the states for necessary financial support.
After watching the Continental Army suffer when the states reneged on promised funds, General Washington felt a visceral contempt for the concept of sovereign and independent states. He became a strong supporter of Madison's idea of a stronger central government, including one with the power to regulate commerce.
In 1785, Madison proposed a Commerce Clause as an amendment to the Articles, with Washington's strong support.
"We are either a united people, or we are not," Washington wrote. "If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern, act as a nation which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be."
Alexander Hamilton, who had served as Washington's chief of staff in the Continental Army, explained the commerce problem this way: "[Often] it would be beneficial to all the states to encourage, or suppress, a particular branch of trade, while it would be detrimental . . . to attempt it without the concurrence of the rest."
Madison himself wrote, regarding the failings of the Articles, that as a result of the "want of concert in matters where common interest requires it," the "national dignity, interest, and revenue [have] suffered."
However, Madison's commerce amendment failed in the Virginia legislature. That led him to seek an even more radical solution -- scrapping the Articles altogether and replacing them with a new structure with a powerful central government whose laws would be supreme and whose powers would extend to coordinating a strategy of national commerce.
Building the Framework
As Madison explained to fellow Virginian Edmund Randolph in a letter of April 8, 1787, as members of the Constitutional Convention were gathering in Philadelphia, what was needed was a "national Government . . . armed with a positive & compleat authority in all cases where uniform measures are necessary."
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