Court Opinion

ID: 9418170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:11:14.040111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:56.611509
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Holmes,
with whom The Chief Justice concurred, dissenting.
As this case has received some further discussion beyond that in Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Kansas, I will contribute my mite. I do not care to add to what I said the other uay as to the supposed accession of rights to a corporation because it already has property in the State. Argument from Pullman’s Palace Car Co. v. Pennsylvania, 141 U. S. 18, is excluded by New York Central Railroad v. Miller, 202 U. S. 584, which shows that the-question whether there is any necessary parallelism between liability to taxation elsewhere and immunity at home still is an open question, p. 598, and points out that in the earlier case the same cars were continuously receiving the protection of Pennsylvania, p. 597. In the present case it is alleged that the cars are taxed in other States as well as in Kansas, and that the property represented by the capital of the company has no situs in Kansas. If I thought it material I should say -that on the declaration the ‘ cars were taxable at the Pullman Company’s domicil more certainly than anywhere else. But I think it immaterial, for the reasons that I gave last week; and, furthermore, the argument drawn from the presence in the State of cars that can be. and are rolled out of it at will cannot, I should think, be meant to be pressed.
I will add a few words on the broader proposition put forward that the Constitution forbids this charge, whether the corporation was established previously in the State or not. I do not see how or why the right of a State to exclude a corporation from internal traffic is complicated or affected in any way by the fact that the corporation has a right to come in for another purpose. It is said that in such a case *76the power of the State is only relative, and in the sense that it is confined to the local business, I agree. But in the sense that it is not absolute over that local business the statement seems to me merely to beg the question that is to be discussed. I do not understand'why the power is less absolute over that because it does not extend to something else. So again the proposition that a State may not subject all corporations that enter the State for commerce with other States to such conditions as it sees fit to. impose upon local business, no matter how offensive the terms, seems to me a proposition not to be assumed but to be proved^ or again that the arbitrary prohibition of local business is a burden on commerce among the States. I am quite unable to believe that an otherwise lawful exclusion from doing business within a State becomes an unlawful or unconstitutional burden on commerce among States because if it were let in it would help to pay the bills. Such an exclusion is not a burden on the foreign commerce at all, it simply is the denial of a collateral benefit. If foreign commerce does not pay its way by itself I see no right to demand an entrance for domestic business to help it out.
The distinction that I believe exists is sanctioned by many cases earlier than those referred to in , my former dissent. That the local businoss of telegraph and railroad companies may be taxed by the States has been held over and over again, with lull acceptance of the doctrine that quoad hoc, ithe power to tax involves the power to destroy/ M’Culloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 431, essentially the doctrine on which the power of the States to tax interstate commerce was denied. Philadelphia & Reading R. R. Co. v. Pennsylvania (‘Case of the State Freight Tax’), 15 Wall. 232. Thus in Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Alabama, 132 U. S. 472, it was held that .the telegraph company could be taxed upon all messages carried and delivered wholly within the State, and the principle was stated by Mr. Justice Miller (p. 473) to be that this “ class are elements of internal commerce solely within the limits, and jurisdiction, of the State, and therefore subject to its taxing *77power.” This was by a unanimous court, and followed the intimations and decisions of earlier cases. The above passage was cited and followed in Postal Telegraph Co. v. Charleston City Council, 153 U. S. 692, when a license fee or tax was exacted in respect of local business, and the previous decisions were cited and commented upon by Mr. Justice Shirás. One of the. arguments repudiated was that, the tax was a burden upon commerce among the States. I do not see how the reasoning that denies the power to tax one kind of-commerce and asserts it with regard to the other, can be reconciled with the denial of the power of the State to exclude the latter altogether, or to tax it for whatever sum it likes. The- right to tax “in its nature acknowledges no limits.” Weston v. Charleston, 2 Pet. 449, 466; People ex rel. Bank of Commerce v. Commissioners of New York, 2 Black, 620.
I think that the tax in question, for I am perfectly willing to call it a. tax, was lawful under all the decisions of this court until last week. From other points of view, if I were at liberty ’ to take them, I should agree that it deserved the reprobation it receives from the majority. But I have not heard and have' not been' able to frame any reason that I honestly can say seems to me to justify the judgment of the court in point of law.
Thío Chief Justice concurs in this dissent.
Mr. Justice McKenna also dissents.