Under Article I, section 8 Congress has power: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
Prof. Gary Lawson and Prof. Neil Siegel provide this outline: "Laws enacted pursuant to the Clause must be (1) necessary, (2) proper, and (3) for carrying into execution some other federal power."
All three of these criteria are essential, and in recent times the criteria concerning "proper" laws is becoming of increasing importance. A law dramatically expanding the power of Congress may be "necessary" [meaning convenient under McCulloch] to executing one of the enumerated powers, but is it "proper" if the result of the expansive power grab is to strip the Tenth Amendment of its intended balancing of national and local power and to deprive the people of the liberty to be governed closer to home?
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