The Supreme Court did not allow Congress to regulate significant aspects of the economy until the constitutional revolution of 1937. In NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., the Court upheld the Wagner Act (a New Deal measure) and allowed Congress to regulate labor relations in a large steel manufacturing plant. The New Deal era was able to fundamentally change the U.S. Supreme Court’s Commerce Clause jurisprudence by expanding congressional power. NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. laid the groundwork for the "substantial effects" principle to govern federal power over intrastate activity. The Supreme Court held that Congress may regulate intrastate activities that "have such a close and substantial relationship to interstate commerce that their control is essential or appropriate to protect that commerce from burdens and obstructions." (Mason, 298). Through Jones & Laughlin Steel, the Court replaced the categorical view of the Commerce Clause with the "substantial effects" test and began considering the actual impact of an activity on interstate commerce. Requiring that intrastate activity substantially affect interstate commerce has since become a touchstone for Commerce Clause analysis (Neusch, 221).

The [Tenth] [A]mendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.

Finally, for the first time in sixty years, the Supreme Court struck down a statute aimed at regulating individual citizens under Congress' commerce power. United States v. Lopez examined the constitutionality of The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 which made it illegal for anyone to possess a firearm within 1000 feet of a school. The Court felt Congress had overreached its commerce power and intruded upon the states' reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment. Regulating possession of weapons in a school zone-conduct clearly within the purview of a state's police power-did not involve interstate commerce, the Chief Justice contended (Neusch, 208). The Chief Justice posited that "[t]o uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States."

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