Nebraska's Corporate-Farming Law and Discriminatory Effects under the Dormant Commerce Clause

Laws dealing with agriculture have generated a great deal of constitutional law. This Article explores one more recent example. Corporate- farming laws are one hallmark of agricultural law. They regulate the use of limited liability business forms for owning agricultural land, engaging in production agriculture, or both on approximately 312 million acres of farmland in nine states.

That is approximately 77% of the land in those states and approximately one-third of all farmland in the United States. These regulations generally take the form of restricting the use of limited liability to those producers that the legislature or electorate have deemed "real farmers" or "family farmers." This Article evaluates whether the "shadows cast by the congressional commerce power" prevent a state from defining for itself who Justice Jackson's farmers are. Stated simply, can states give these farmers preferential access to the means of production without violating the dormant Commerce Clause ("DCC") doctrine?