was to stabilize the price of wheat on the national market. The federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce by the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. In this decision, the Court unanimously reasoned that the power to regulate the price at which commerce occurs was inherent in the power to regulate commerce. Filburn argued that since the excess wheat that he produced was intended solely for home consumption, his wheat production could not be regulated through the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Supreme Court rejected the argument and reasoned that if Filburn had not produced his own wheat, he would have bought wheat on the open market. That effect on interstate commerce, the Court reasoned, may not be substantial from the actions of Filburn alone, but the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers just like Filburn would certainly make the effect become substantial. Therefore, Congress could regulate wholly intrastate, non-commercial activity if such activity, viewed in the aggregate, would have a substantial effect on interstate commerce, even if the individual effects are trivial. Some of the parties' argument had focused on prior decisions, especially those relating to the Dormant Commerce Clause, in which the Court had tried to focus on whether a commercial activity was local or not. Justice Robert H. Jackson's decision rejected that approach as too formulaic: The issue was not how one characterized the activity as local. Rather, it was whether the activity "exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce:" The regulation of local production of wheat was rationally related to Congress's goal: to stabilize prices by limiting the total supply of wheat produced and consumed. It was clear, the Court held, Aftermath Wickard marked the beginning of the Supreme Court's total deference to the claims of the U.S. Congress to Commerce Clause powers until the 1990s. The Court's own decision, however, emphasizes the role of the democratic electoral process in confining the abuse of the power of Congress: "At the beginning Chief Justice Marshall described the Federal commerce power with a breadth never yet exceeded. He made emphatic the embracing and penetrating nature of this power by warning that effective restraints on its exercise must proceed from political rather than from judicial processes." According to Earl M. Maltz, Wickard and other New Deal decisions gave Congress "the authority to regulate private economic activity in a manner near limitless in its purview." That remained