The Soil and the Law: I

Abstract

T HE first installment of this article discussed the State Soil Conservation Districts Laws as an illustration of the way in which Federal and State constitutional provisions come to play upon a State land program and create the institutional environment within which it must be made to operate. In this installment we shall, from the same point of view, consider a Federal land program. In the case of State programs dealing with the soil, as we have seen, the most crucial issues are those that revolve around the concepts due process, police power, public purpose, equal protection of the laws, and delegation of legislative power. In the case of Federal legislation in this field the central question must always be the existence of Federal power to deal with the matter at all. Only when this central question has been answered in favor of Federal power can we arrive at such other issues as delegation of legislative power, due process and the like. These other issues are not dissimilar when applied to Federal legislation from the form they take in the case of State programs. From the point of view of land-use programs, the two principal legislative powers of Congress are the power to regulate foreign and interstate commerce, and the so-called general spending power. We have already touched briefly upon the scope of the commerce-regulating power in this field.2 It is appropriate to consider the spending power more fully, because of the fact that so large a part of the financing of soil programs is being carried by the Federal Government. The recent interesting judicial history of the adjustment program of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, in which the issue turned on the scope of the spending power, makes that program particularly appropriate for discussion.