Court Opinion

ID: 9419633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:32.160887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:42:10.436372
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Murphy,
concurring in part.
With Mr. Justice Black’s view that whatever constitutional tax immunity the merchandise in question may have had was lost by virtue of its storage in petitioner’s *692warehouse pending its use in petitioner’s manufacturing operations I agree. But the Court holds otherwise on that issue. We therefore are met with the further issue as to whether the fact that the merchandise was shipped from the Philippine Islands to the United States made the merchandise an import within the meaning of Article I, § 10, Clause 2 of the Constitution and therefore immune from state taxation. As to that problem I am convinced that the affirmative answer given by the Chief Justice is the correct one and I concur in that portion of his opinion.
That affirmative answer, in my estimation, is compelled in good measure by practical considerations. The moral and legal obligations owed the Philippine Islands by the United States are, so far as I am aware, matchless and unique. The United States is committed to a policy of granting complete independence to the Philippines. It has already granted their people and their officials a large measure of autonomy. But until the sovereignty of the United States is finally withdrawn, the United States retains plenary and unrestricted powers over them and is responsible for their welfare.
We have as a nation exhibited an ideal and a selfless concern for the well-being of the Philippine people, a concern that has been deepened by the devastation that war has brought to their land. Since the Islands were ceded to us, we have at once fostered their economic development through preferential trade agreements and encouraged their desires for freedom and independence. Their industries and their agriculture have gradually been adjusted in contemplation of their eventual sovereign independence. But war has stricken their land and their peoples. Their growing economy has been largely decimated by over three years of ruthless invasion and occupation. Filipinos in countless numbers have yielded up *693not only their property but their lives and their liberties. Their economic and social structure has fallen about them in ruins.
Now, with the Islands liberated, our moral and legal obligations are greater than ever before. Our responsibility for providing urgent relief and rehabilitation has been readily assumed. But the more complex and difficult duty of helping to reconstruct the Philippine economic structure remains to be fulfilled. It is clear that the Philippines cannot safely be thrown into the world market and left to shift for themselves. For the foreseeable future, at least, their economy must be closely linked to that of the United States, without either country abandoning or retreating from the common ideal of independence for the Philippines.
Accordingly it is my view that if it is reasonably possible to do so we should avoid a construction of the term “imports,” as used in Article I, § 10, Clause 2 of the Constitution, that would place Philippine products at a disadvantage on the American market to the advantage of products from other countries or that might be a means of impeding the economic rehabilitation- of the Philippines.If we can justifiably construe that term to prohibit state taxation on shipments from the Philippines we shall to that extent have conformed to the national policy of aiding the Philippine reconstruction. Any taxation or tariff on Philippine shipments that may be felt to be necessary from the standpoint of the United States would then become a matter solely for Congress, which could properly balance any conflicting interests of the two nations.
Such a construction, in my estimation, is entirely fair and reasonable. There are, to be sure, statements by this Court to the effect that the term “imports” refers only to those goods brought in from a country foreign to the United States. Woodruff v. Parham, 8 Wall. 123, 136; *694Dooley v. United States, 183 U. S. 151, 154. But such statements, as pointed out by the Court today, were unnecessary to the decision of the issues there involved and cannot control the problem presented here. It has also been held that the Philippine Islands are not a foreign country within the meaning of tariff laws specifically referring to any “foreign country.” Fourteen Diamond Rings v. United States, 183 U. S. 176; De Lima v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 1. The inapplicability of these cases is obvious.
It further appears that Congress has usually avoided the use of the term “imports” in the enactment of legislation affecting trade with the Philippines and other dependencies and that the term has been regarded by certain government agencies as inapplicable to articles coming from the Philippines. But such usage clearly cannot affect our interpretation of a constitutional provision.
As appears more fully in the Court's opinion, there is thus no controlling authority requiring us to hold that shipments from the Philippines are not imports within the meaning of Article I, § 10, Clause 2 of the Constitution. Under such circumstances the interpretation of this constitutional provision adopted by the Chief Justice is a permissible one. And, in view of what I conceive to be the practical considerations, it is a highly necessary and desirable one. Only under that interpretation can this part of the Constitution be consistent with our duties as trustee for the Philippines.