Court Opinion

ID: 9430530
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:57.596119+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:24.877247
License: Public Domain

*586Justice Blackmun,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion (except for its footnote 6), but I would go further and overrule Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc. v. Hostetter, 384 U. S. 35 (1966). Seagram is now a relic of the past. It was decided when affirmation statutes were comparatively new and long before the proliferation of overlapping and potentially conflicting affirmation statutes that has taken place in the last two decades. I see no principled distinction that can be drawn for constitutional analysis between New York’s current prospective statute and the same State’s retroactive statute upheld in Seagram, and I doubt very much whether any Member of this Court would be able to perceive one. Either type, despite one’s best efforts at fine-tuning, operates to affect out-of-state transactions and violates the Commerce Clause. Our failure to overrule Seagram now merely preserves uncertainty and will breed or necessitate further litigation. We should face reality and overrule Seagram.