Court Opinion

ID: 9841757
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:04:32.319787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:38.475780
License: Public Domain

Mb. Justice Miller
dissenting.
I do not find myself able to agree with the court in its judgment in this case.
The act of Congress creating a territorial government for the District of Columbia declared that the legislative power of the District should “ extend to all rightful subjects of legislation within said District; ” which undoubtedly was intended to authorize the District to exercise the usual municipal powers. The act of the Legislative Assembly of the District, under which Hennick was convicted, imposed “ a license on trades,business, and professions practised or carried on in the District of Columbia/? and a penalty on all persons engaging in- such trades, business, or profession without obtaining that license. As the court says in its opinion, this was-, manifestly regarded i o i regulation of a purely municipal character.”
The taxing of persons engaged in the:]j«siness of selling by sample, commonly called drummers, is one of this class, and the only thing urged against the validity of this law is that it is a regulation of interstate commerce, and, therefore, .an exercise of a power which rests exclusively in Congress. I pass the question, which is a very important one, whether this act of the Legislature of the District of Columbia, being one exercised under the power conferred on it by Congress, and *150coming, as I think, strictly within the limit of the power thus conferred, is not so far as this question is concerned, sustained' by the authority of Congress itself, and is substantially the' action of that body.
The cases of Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, and Asher v. Texas, 128 U. S. 129, hold the regulations requiring drummers to be licensed to be' .regulations of commerce, and invasions of the power conferred upon Congress on that subject by the Constitution of the United States. In those cases I concurred in the judgment, because, as applied to commerce between citizens of one State and those of another State, it was a regulation of interstate commerce;’ or, in the language of the Constitution, of commerce. “ among the several States,” being a prosecution of a citizen of a State other than Tennessee, in the first case, for selling goods without a license to citizens of Tenness.ee, and in the other case to citizens of Texas.
But the constitutional provision is not that Congress shall have power- to regulate all commerce. It has been repeatedly held that there is a commerce entirely within a State, and among its own citizens, which Congress has no power to regulate. The language of the constitutional provision points out three distinct classes of cases in which Congress may regulate commerce, and no others. 'The language is that “Congress shall have power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.”
Unless the act for which Hennick was prosecuted in this case was commerce with a foreign nation, among the several States, or with an Indian tribe, it is not an act over which the Congress of the United States had any exclusive power of regulation. • Commerce among the several States, as was early held by this court in Gibbons v. Ogden, 6 Wheat. 448, means commerce between citizens of the several States, and' had no reference to transaction's by a State, as such, with another State, in their corporate or public capacities. Indeed, it .would be of very little lvalue if that was the limitation or the meaning .to be placed upon ip-> I take it for granted, therefore, *151that its practical utility is in the power to regulate commerce between the citizens of the different States.
Commerce between a- citizen of Baltimore, which Hennick • is alleged to be in the pfosecutiop in this.- case» and' citizens of Washington, or of the District of Columbia^ is*mot. commerce “ among the several States,” and is; not commerce between citizens of different States, in any sense. ' Commerce by a citizen of one State, in order to come within the constitutional' provision, must be commerce with a citizen of another State; and where one of the parties is a citizen of a Territory, or of the District of Columbia, or of any other place out of a State of the Union, it is not commerce among the citizens of the several States.
As the license law under which Hennick was prosecuted made it necessary for him to take out a license to do his business in the city of Washington, or the District of Columbia, which was not a State, nor a foreign nation, nor within the domain of an Indian tribe, the act upon the subject does not infringe the Constitution of the United States.
For these reasons I dissent from the judgment of the court.