Also known as: Elastic Clause · Coefficient Clause
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
An auxiliary grant of authority that empowers Congress to select appropriate means for carrying its enumerated powers into execution. The clause supplies no independent substantive legislative power and instead functions only to implement specifically granted authorities such as taxing, borrowing, and regulating commerce.
Congress chartered a digital payments bank operated by the State of Missouri to process federal tax collections and manage national savings accounts. The bank operated nationwide. The State of Alabama enacted a franchise tax that applied only to financial institutions not chartered by Alabama. Missouri challenged the tax as an improper burden on a federal instrumentality created to execute enumerated fiscal powers.
Nalini Narula filed a diversity action in federal court against a defendant residing in another state. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(d)(1) authorized service by leaving process at the defendant's residence with a person of suitable age. The defendant moved to dismiss for improper service under state law. The court applied the federal rule because it fell within the constitutional power to regulate federal court procedure.
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The City of New London condemned private homes to assemble land for a private developer who promised new jobs and increased tax revenue. Homeowners challenged the taking as lacking a public use. The Court upheld the action because the economic development plan advanced a legitimate public purpose that Congress could implement through appropriate means under its enumerated powers.
Burlington Northern appealed a judgment in federal court. Alabama law imposed a mandatory 15 percent penalty on the appellant regardless of the outcome. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 38 allowed discretionary sanctions for frivolous appeals. The court refused to apply the state penalty because the federal rule controlled matters of appellate procedure in federal courts.
Congress enacted a statute creating a federal civil remedy for gender-motivated violence. The statute applied to purely intrastate conduct with no required connection to interstate commerce. A defendant challenged the remedy as beyond congressional authority. The Court held that the provision could not be sustained as a means of executing the commerce power because it regulated noneconomic local activity without a substantial effect on interstate markets.
Congress passed an immigration statute that allowed one House to veto the Attorney General's decision to suspend deportation of an alien. Chadha, an alien whose suspension was vetoed, challenged the procedure. The Court held that the one-House veto was not a necessary and proper means of implementing the naturalization power because it violated the bicameralism and presentment requirements of Article I.
No. The clause supplies only auxiliary authority to select appropriate means for executing enumerated powers such as taxing and regulating commerce. It does not create freestanding substantive legislative power.
Yes. Congress may select the corporate form as a means to execute enumerated powers over defense and interstate commerce when the charter is plainly adapted to those ends.
No. Once Congress validly creates a federal instrumentality to execute enumerated powers, states may not single it out for unfavorable taxation that burdens federal operations.
Yes. Congress may establish such offices as appropriate means to execute taxing and commerce powers and may protect them from targeted state taxation that interferes with federal functions.
…measures like Rule 4 (d) (1) are unconstitutional. For the constitutional provision for a federal court system (augmented by the Necessary and Proper Clause) carries with it congressional power to make rules governing the practice and pleading in those courts, which in turn includes a power to regulate matters which, though falling within the…