> Had those currencies become significant and used in interstate commerce
They were. The government's reaction to the popularity of the Bechtler coins was to open two mints in North Carolina, not to "regulate" Bechtler's coins.
They were. The government's reaction to the popularity of the Bechtler coins was to open two mints in North Carolina, not to "regulate" Bechtler's coins.
The government does not lose enumerated powers, or the ability to apply them in a particular manner, because it chose not to apply them in that manner at one time in the past in a similar circumstance.
You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case, but that takes more than waving your hand in the direction of the past case and asserting that it exists and therefore the restraint the government exercised then must be repeated, it takes actually making the case that that decision would be correct in the present circumstances.
Generation to generation, the natural tendency of a relative minority is to seek and maintain influence over the many. This is reflected in the continued advance of the power of the State over the rights and liberties of its citizens. Unlike our own political vocabulary, The Greeks had terms for this particular dynamic: hoi polloi and hoi oligoi.
> You can, of course, make the argument that, power aside, the government should not use its enumerated powers in the way in question and should instead act as it did in the past case
My larger argument is more fundamental. If power is asserted over rights often enough, there will be few, if any, actual rights left.
Perhaps. But in this case you're not speaking of any actual 'right' that people had in the first place, so there's no right that would be eroded by SEC action here.