Source: United States v. Lopez, 1995, US Supreme Court, majority opinion by Rehnquist
The Court reasoned that if Congress could regulate something so far removed from commerce, then it could regulate anything, and since the Constitution clearly creates Congress as a body with enumerated powers, this could not be so. Rehnquist concluded:
To uphold the Government's contentions here, we have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action. The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. [1.] To do so would require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated, and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. This we are unwilling to do.
Sequences of negative words still hamstring me, so please explain and show all steps and thought processes. Do all negative words in the bolded phrase lie within each other's scope? I cancelled the two negatives, but then the rewrite appears trivially true which implies a mistake somewhere:
[2.] ... the Constitution's enumeration ... does not presuppose something not enumerated
If any document enumerates X, then the ability of X to be enumerated, must have been presupposed! The majority's rejection of 1 implies that 2 (a logically, albeit trivially, true statement) differs from 1.