In the Powers v. United States case of 1911, the Supreme Court ruled on a matter concerning jury selection in federal courts. The defendant, Mr. Powers, was convicted for conspiracy to defraud the government by using mail and argued that his conviction should be overturned because African Americans were excluded from his grand jury panel. He claimed this exclusion violated his rights under both statutory law and constitutional law (the Fourteenth Amendment). However, he himself was not African American but white. The court held that a white defendant has no standing to challenge an indictment based on racial discrimination in grand jury selection unless it can be shown that there is also prejudice against whites or if it violates another right such as due process clause of Fifth Amendment or equal protection clause of Fourteenth Amendment.

In the dissenting opinion for Powers v. United States, Justice Harlan argued that the majority's decision to uphold a federal law prohibiting lotteries was an overreach of Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. He contended that while Congress has authority to regulate interstate commerce, it does not have unlimited power to prohibit items from being transported across state lines simply because they are deemed immoral or harmful by some standards. He asserted this would give Congress too much discretion in determining what constitutes morality and could lead to potential abuses of power. Furthermore, he believed such matters should be left up to individual states rather than decided at a federal level.