Cite as: 529 U. S. 598 (2000)
Souter, J., dissenting
dividual States see fit. The legitimacy of the Court's current emphasis on the noncommercial nature of regulated activity, then, does not turn on any logic serving the text of the Commerce Clause or on the realism of the majority's view of the national economy. The essential issue is rather the strength of the majority's claim to have a constitutional warrant for its current conception of a federal relationship enforceable by this Court through limits on otherwise plenary commerce power. This conception is the subject of the majority's second categorical discount applied today to the facts bearing on the substantial effects test.
B
The Court finds it relevant that the statute addresses conduct traditionally subject to state prohibition under domestic criminal law, a fact said to have some heightened significance when the violent conduct in question is not itself aimed directly at interstate commerce or its instrumentalities. Ante, at 609. Again, history seems to be recycling, for the theory of traditional state concern as grounding a limiting principle has been rejected previously, and more than once. It was disapproved in Darby, 312 U. S., at 123-124, and held insufficient standing alone to limit the commerce power in Hodel, 452 U. S., at 276-277. In the particular context of the Fair Labor Standards Act it was rejected in Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183 (1968), with the recognition that "[t]here is no general doctrine implied in the Federal Constitution that the two governments, national and state, are each to exercise its powers so as not to interfere with the free and full exercise of the powers of the other." Id., at 195 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court held it to be "clear that the Federal Government, when acting within a delegated power, may override countervailing state interests, whether these be described as 'governmental' or 'proprietary' in character." Ibid. While Wirtz was later overruled by National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U. S.
645
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