Constitutional Law in 1924–1925: The Constitutional Decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the October Term, 1924

The decisions arising under the commerce clause of the Constitution during the 1924 term of the Supreme Court did not involve any striking extension of national authority in that field. There was no case approaching in significance the Recapture Clause Case decided in the previous term. However, the reinforcement of a familiar principle through a striking application of it, or the lucid and pungent expression of an old doctrine, lends some significance to several cases which otherwise have no far-reaching importance.In the case of Brooks v. United States the court sustained the constitutionality of the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act of 1919. The act subjected to heavy penalties any one who transported or caused to be transported in interstate or foreign commerce any motor vehicle, knowing it to have been stolen, and any one who, with the same guilty knowledge, “shall receive, conceal, store, barter, sell, or dispose of any motor vehicle, moving as, or which is a part of, or which constitutes interstate or foreign commerce.” It is certainly no surprise to learn from the opinion of Chief Justice Taft that the power to regulate commerce which is broad enough to enable Congress to bar from interstate transportation lottery tickets, diseased cattle, adulterated food, prize-fight films, and the like, and to penalize the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes, is a power which can likewise be used to punish those who abuse the privileges of interstate and foreign commerce by using them in the furtherance of larceny or the disposal of stolen goods.