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No. I am admitted to practice in Texas, New York, California, D.C., and hopefully soon in Arizona, and can tell you that there is substantial difference between the laws of those jurisdictions. There are some states that cast big legal shadows (in the 19th and early 20th centuries, for example, New York was very influential on its neighbors, meaning that states such as Connecticut now have substantial overlap, and in the mid-20th century, California played a similar role), but that is typically the exception, rather than the rule. There are still states that are very much legal outliers (e.g., Louisiana), and even states that are similar geographically and culturally (e.g., Texas and Oklahoma) often take very different approaches to certain facets of the law. A “one-size-fits-all” approach to American law ignores the uniqueness of individual states’ laws.And second, while federal law is (largely) uniform across the country, the vast majority of lawyers will practice predominantly or exclusively within state law systems. Most crimes are state law crimes, meaning that criminal attorneys will largely practice in state courts. Family law? It’s almost 100% state-related. Most civil suits—everything from personal injury to breach of contract—are again in state court. And even if you’re not a “courtroom” attorney, if you’re working for the government or preparing wills, etc., odds are that you’re going to need to be a student of state law/regulations more than federal. There are certainly lawyers out there with exclusively/predominantly federal practices, but they’re the minority: there have always been complaints that bar exams don’t match real world situations (future M&A attorneys, for example, likely have little need to understand probate or real estate principles), but a “federal only” approach would be even more divorced from reality. As most lawyers are going to be “state law” lawyers, if you want to practice in a particular state, you should have to demonstrate some degree of competency as to that state’s laws.

The answer is yes, and the reason is actually interesting on a more general level, because it’s an important piece of how our system of government actually works.Recall that states are essentially their own mini-countries, each with their own legislatures, laws, and courts that have jurisdiction within their own borders. It’s easy, then, for one state to pass a law that conflicts with another’s. Yet, when conceiving of America as a unified nation, we expect that what we do in one part of the country will still have full effect in another.Thus, states are required to recognize the drivers’ licenses of other states thanks to Article IV, Section I in the Constitution. This is called the “Full Faith and Credit Clause”:Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.Before we had the Constitution, we had the Articles of Confederation. One of the central problems of these Articles was that while they had a similar clause requiring States to give “full faith and credit” to one another’s “acts, records, and judicial proceedings,” they lacked that crucial second sentence about exactly how that was to take place. Consequently, in 1786, a Pennsylvania court concluded that while courts were obliged to receive the records of other states as evidence, they didn’t have to act on them if they didn’t want to. And nobody could tell Pennsylvania any differently.This created a certain level of chaos, as contracts created in one state found themselves completely nullified in another. Marriages might be recognized in one state but not another. Divorces might have effect, or be completely unrecognized. And your New York-issued identification papers might be seen as worthless in Georgia.Thus, one of the key improvements when we switched from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution was that second sentence, which gave the requirement some teeth and allowed a means by which states could settle differences of opinion as to how the law of other states applied to them.Before 2015, the Full Faith and Credit clause had significant impact on gay rights; once Vermont allowed for Civil Unions, and Hawaii for gay marriage, gay couples would travel to these states and then return as legally unioned/married in their otherwise anti-marriage-equality home state. Meanwhile, 39 states passed laws that explicitly relieved them from recognizing another state’s gay marriage (or equivalent). These laws were all overturned in 2015’s Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized gay marriage nationally. While the decision did not turn explicitly on the grounds of the FF&C clause, it nevertheless required all states to recognize the lawful marriages of other states, including gay marriage.

Possibly, but I doubt it.This might seem like a little windy-twisty answer, but I promise that all the context is meaningful. Just go with it.What was going on at the time of Wickard v. Filburn?Back in the 1930’s, in the middle of the Great Depression, wheat prices were taking a huge hit. Farmers were losing their shirts on the crop.The government anticipated that farmers would just do what market forces usually have happen: they’d stop planting wheat and switch to other things. Then there would suddenly be a wheat shortage, which would spike prices and make bread unaffordable to the average person. Not good.So, the Feds came in and made a law and a program to keep wheat prices stable: we’ll guarantee you a certain price for wheat. The only way this works is if they can control the amount of wheat hitting the market, otherwise farmers grow a crap ton of wheat and the government goes broke trying to guarantee a price. So, the catch to the farmers was that they could only grow a certain quota of wheat.The constitutional basis for this regulation is the Interstate Commerce Clause, Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, which gives the Federal government the plenary power to “regulate commerce . . . among the several States.”There are two bits of the Constitution that are always in a little bit of a tension. You have the Commerce Clause, and then you have the 10th Amendment.The 10th Amendment states that whatever normal government powers are not granted to the Federal government by the Constitution remain with the States.And this causes some issues with the Commerce Clause, because what does it mean to regulate commerce among the several States?The Founding FeudIt’s important to this question to go back to what was happening in 1787, when the Constitution, including the Commerce Clause was drafted.The Revolution had been won a decade prior. And the first governing framework for the Federal government following the Declaration of Independence was the Articles of Confederation.The Articles heavily emphasized state control of most things, and gave the fledgling Federal government very little authority to do much other than raise an army, do some foreign diplomacy, and a very, very limited power to tax. It was explicitly stated that it did not create a unified national government, and that this was merely an agreement between the states.It was basically enough to get through the Revolutionary War, and quickly became apparent that it was just not going to work moving forward beyond that. Virtually everything required a unanimous vote by the states. The country quickly went broke and dealt with some pretty serious issues. There was no president, no national court system. The states themselves could print paper money that quickly became utterly worthless, and the squabbling states after peace was declared with England quickly entered into basically trade wars with each other.(As an interesting footnote, they also provided a blanket acceptance of the province of Quebec to join up if they wanted to.)The United States didn’t see itself as one big country at the time. Not at all. You weren’t a US citizen. You were a New Yorker, or a Virginian. Each State viewed itself as an independent little nation unto itself. It was a lot like the EU today.By 1786, it was pretty clear this wasn't working.The United States Continental Congressional government was flat broke. And being flat broke, they started to have trouble paying its bills, particularly to the guys who fought the Revolution itself. And once guys stopped getting their veterans’ checks, they were pissed.That led to something called Shay’s Rebellion, which was basically the last straw for the Articles of Confederation. They just couldn’t hold these fractious little mini-countries together anymore.Alexander Hamilton called for a conference to draft a replacement. Most people figured the Articles could just be revised. In 1787, Congress met in Philadelphia with the notion of doing just that, but ultimately ended up drafting a whole new document: the Constitution.There were two main factions in drafting this new Constitution.Hamilton, John Jay, and others who wanted a strong, centralized Federal government became known as the Federalists. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and others who wanted a weaker, decentralized Federal government were known as the anti-Federalists, or Democratic Republicans.We’re still fighting out this exact feud to this very day.The Commerce Clause was one of the things the Federalists really wanted because of the little trade wars between all of these squabbling individual States. In order to keep the whole thing from coming apart at the seams, someone neutral had to be able to regulate these little trade wars and keep New York from squashing Rhode Island.The Democratic Republicans were a little worried about this, but they agreed in principle. The Federal government would mediate these trade wars by letting Congress have authority to regulate interstate commercial activity.Remember this. This is important. We’re going to come back to this.The Early Years of the Commerce ClauseFor the first 75 years of the country, the Commerce Clause got pretty little attention, mostly because the Federal government really didn’t do much. Mostly it killed Indians and fought a couple wars, and that was about it. So, there wasn’t really much tension between the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment here. There were a handful of cases.But post-Civil War, you had Reconstruction. The Federal government came in and started imposing a lot of restrictions on the states that tried to secede, in order to hold the Union back together again and make sure the southern states didn’t just try to reimpose slavery.The Supreme Court started striking down a lot of that because it took a strong view of the 10th Amendment as an affirmative limitation on the Federal government, and a weak view of the Commerce Clause as just regulating literally commerce occurring over state lines and that’s it. Wholly intrastate commerce was off limits to the Federal government.This was part of a period in judicial history that we now call the Lochner Era. The Supreme Court really saw itself as a sort of super-legislature and had no deference to Congress whatsoever. “Freedom to contract” was about the only fundamental right recognized by the Court, and laissez faire attitudes towards the relationship between government and commerce was the norm. So, the Court took a very dim view of what the Commerce Clause allowed and didn’t.For that matter, they took a pretty limited view of what constituted commerce. Manufacturing was not considered commerce. Mining was not considered commerce. Anything apart from the actual buying and selling of stuff was not considered commerce.That meant that minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws, working conditions laws, all of that was considered unconstitutional.That took a turn in 1937 with what is often called “the switch in time that saved nine.” FDR’s New Deal was popular, but was in jeopardy from a Supreme Court that was striking it down left and right. FDR threatened to appoint a new “assistant” Supreme Court justice for every justice over the age of 70 1/2 to “help with the workload.” This would give him a majority on the Court. The Court, realizing that institutional legitimacy was on the line, switched course and became much more deferential to Congress.That’s where Wickard comes in.But, Dude, I’m Growing It for Myself!Roscoe Filburn was growing wheat with that USDA program in 1940. Based on the average wheat production of his property, he was told he could plant 11.1 acres of wheat. And here’s where he made his mistake: he planted 23 acres instead.His logic for why he wasn’t breaking the law was that he wasn’t selling that wheat - he was just going to use it for himself.A USDA agent noticed his extra wheat field, and told him he either had to plow it under or pay a fine of 49 cents per acre, a total fine of $7.84, or about $130 in today’s dollars.Well, ol’ Roscoe told that USDA agent right where he could shove that ticket and went to the Federal courthouse to fight it because the gubbmint had no business telling him what he could and could not plant for his own personal use on his own personal property, right?Well, no, the District Court told him. The government could tell him that. They agreed that the fine was excessive and there was some dispute over whether the government had tried to raise it after the fact, and the District Court ruled in Filburn’s favor to reduce the fine to 15 cents per acre.Claude Wickard, Secretary of Agriculture, had a big problem with this, though.What if everyone did this? What if everyone just skirted the law by growing it “for themselves” and not putting it on the market? Prices would crash and the whole law would be pointless.The Supreme CourtThe USDA brought this argument up to the Supreme Court:What about this “aggregation” problem - what if everyone did something? Can the government regulate things where the effect of lots of people doing something trivial that was wholly intrastate would have a “substantial impact” on interstate commerce?The Court in Wickard ruled unanimously that yes, this aggregate activity had a substantial impact on interstate commerce. And things that had a substantial impact on interstate commerce, the Court decided, were things that the Constitution empower Congress to regulate.Remember that Founding Feud?I told you it was going to come back later.Because after Wickard, the Commerce Clause power became almost a set of magic words for Congress. Any time a law needed justification, it was passed pursuant to the Commerce Clause.The Civil Rights Act? Commerce Clause.The Fair Housing Act? Commerce Clause.It would more than 50 years after Wickard before the Court would strike down another law pursuant to the Commerce Clause.The Federalist Society and Judicial Court PackingThis whole Wickard mess was precisely one of the things that the anti-Federalist Democratic Republicans were worried about: a Federal government coming in and telling individual guys what they could and could not do with their own property. They felt it was anathema to liberty.And it was one of the things that the Federalists were also worried about: what if people started messing up commerce in a way that affected the whole nation? What good is liberty if the country falls apart?The course of our nation’s history has continued to trend more and more towards the Federalist philosophy of a stronger, more centralized Federal government as a necessary part of keeping the country unified and running smoothly under the notion of “ordered liberty.”Ironically, the conservative Federalist Society would like the judiciary to walk straight backwards in the opposite direction towards the Democratic Republican view: a weaker, less centralized Federal government with fewer powers that defers to the States.And right now, the Federalist Society is packing the Federal judiciary with the most Federal District Court, Courts of Appeals, and Supreme Court justices that they can while the Senate and President happen to give them the run of the place.These are folks who would love to see Wickard and an expansive view of the Commerce Clause overturned.Will they do it?Hard to say.Where We Are TodayThe Rehnquist Court started down the road to trimming away at the edges of the Commerce Clause in the 90’s, starting with United States v. Lopez, in which the Court decided that Gun Free School Zones were not commerce and that Congress’ justification of having passed the law pursuant to the Commerce Clause was not valid, because they didn’t make any findings about how guns in schools impacted interstate commerce.So, when Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act, they made detailed findings about how violence against women impacts interstate commerce.And the Rehnquist Court again hedged. They struck down the act, because violence against women isn’t really an economic activity, and so if it’s not economic activity, Congress can’t use Wickard’s aggregation doctrine to come up with a substantial impact on interstate commerce.When Chief Justice John Roberts took over from Rehnquist in 2005, his court settled on this economic activity rule again in Gonzales v. Raich, which held that a lady growing marijuana in her basement could be regulated under the Controlled Substances Act, because even though she didn’t sell it and was never going to sell it, growing stuff for personal use is an economic activity, upholding Wickard.But in 2012, the Roberts Court nibbled at the edges of Wickard a little bit again. This time, the Court held in National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Sibelius that people choosing not to enter a marketplace is not economic activity that can be aggregated, and something that the Court can’t regulate through the Commerce Clause.So that’s where we are today.We don’t really know what the long game is with the Roberts Court.So far, they’ve been content to keep the bulk of the deference to Congress, and chip around the edges.Will they ever fully overturn Wickard’s aggregation doctrine? Maybe. Maybe not.Thanks for the A2A.