Cite as: 520 U. S. 564 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
"not met its heavy burden of persuasion that the statute is unconstitutional." Ibid.
We granted certiorari. 516 U. S. 1157. For the reasons that follow, we now reverse.
II
During the first years of our history as an independent confederation, the National Government lacked the power to regulate commerce among the States. Because each State was free to adopt measures fostering its own local interests without regard to possible prejudice to nonresidents, what Justice Johnson characterized as a "conflict of commercial regulations, destructive to the harmony of the States," ensued. See Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 224 (1824) (opinion concurring in judgment). In his view, this "was the immediate cause that led to the forming of a [constitutional] convention." Ibid. "If there was any one object riding over every other in the adoption of the constitution, it was to keep the commercial intercourse among the States free from all invidious and partial restraints." Id., at 231.7
We have subsequently endorsed Justice Johnson's appraisal of the central importance of federal control over interstate and foreign commerce and, more narrowly, his conclusion that the Commerce Clause had not only granted Congress express authority to override restrictive and conflicting commercial regulations adopted by the States, but that it also had immediately effected a curtailment of state power. "In short, the Commerce Clause even without implementing legislation by Congress is a limitation upon the power of the States. Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona ex rel.
7 See also West Lynn Creamery, Inc. v. Healy, 512 U. S. 186, 193, n. 9 (1994) (noting that "[t]he 'negative' aspect of the Commerce Clause was considered the more important by the 'father of the Constitution,' James Madison"); Hughes v. Oklahoma, 441 U. S. 322, 325-326 (1979); Hughes v. Alexandria Scrap Corp., 426 U. S. 794, 807, n. 16 (1976) (quoting W. Rutledge, A Declaration of Legal Faith 25-26 (1947)).
571
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