Post Office

Arguing that the Postal Clause created a single sweeping power for the federal government to erect and operate a national transportation, freight, and communication monopoly.

Noting that “[t]he power over post offices and post roads would facilitate interstate traffic, and it also would raise revenue” as part of a general principle that “the federal government, through a collection of powers, should oversee matters extending across state lines.”

Noting Lysander Spooner’s argument that “the federal postal monopoly exceeded the grant of power given to Congress in Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 ‘[t]o establish Post Offices and post Roads’” and that “the constitutional grant of power to establish post offices and post roads is narrower than the power given to Congress under the Articles of Confederation, which granted Congress the ‘sole and exclusive right [of] . . . establishing and regulating post offices.’”

Arguing that if “‘commerce’ means ‘intercourse,’ the postal power would have been superfluous,” but that this does not “undermine the argument that the power to regulate commerce includes the power to regulate interstate and international communications.”

Noting that congressional opposition to an amendment delegating power to designate post roads to the President may have represented an attempt to protect congressional pork rather than a principled exposition of an original non-delegation doctrine.