At 03:44 PM, 9 October 2002 -0400, Joseph B. Reid wrote: >"By article 9, paragraph 4 of the Articles of Confederation (1777), >Congress was given the sole and exclusive right and power of,,,;fixing the >standard of weights and measures throughout the United States." > (Excerpt from "A History of the Metric System Controersy in the > United States" NBS SP 345-10, page 14.)
Curious, Joe, that you quote the Articles of Confederation, a purely historical document of no legal standing, rather than the standing US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8: "Congress shall have the power to ...fix the standard of weights and measures..." Whether this gives Congress the power to change the country from colloquial to metric units has also been argued on this forum in the past (visions of Crazy Eddie dance in my head). A brief recap of what I have said in the past: (a) "fix" does not mean "change" (b) "fix" can mean "define" rather than "mandate" (c) Supreme Court cases as recently as 1995 have made it clear that when restricting commercial use of units of measure the government must show legitimate reason, and has outlined a four-point test of whether the government's reason is justifiable. Some of you may recall that I paid my own hard-earned dollars to get a legal opinion on the constitutionality of metric-only laws in this country. The lawyers' opinion was fairly unequivocal: Laws requiring metric labels are probably constitutional. Laws prohibiting colloquial units are probably not. To the degree that this is the case, my arguments for metricating the USA by getting the federal government to start buying metric products, rather than mandates on private businesses, are even stronger. Jim Elwell, CAMS Electrical Engineer Industrial manufacturing manager Salt Lake City, Utah, USA www.qsicorp.com
