Court Opinion

ID: 9418867
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:41:38.316236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:12.040646
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Cardozo,
dissenting.
I think the judgment should be reversed.
Congress may reasonably have believed that, in view of the attendant risks, a business carried on illegally and furtively is likely to yield larger profits than one transacted openly by law-abiding men. Not repression, but payment commensurate with the gains is thus the animating motive. The gains in all likelihood will seldom be exhausted by a tax of $1,000. Congress may also have believed that the furtive character of the business would increase the difficulty and expense of the process of tax collection. The Treasury should have reimbursement for this drain on its resources. Apart from either of these beliefs, Congress may have held the view that an excise should be so distributed as to work a minimum of hardship; that an illegal and furtive business, irrespective of the wrongdoing of its proprietor, is a breeder of crimes and a refuge of criminals; and that in any wisely ordered polity, in any sound system of taxation, men engaged in such a calling will be made to contribute more heavily to the necessities of the Treasury than men engaged in a calling that is beneficent and lawful.
Thus viewed, the statute was not adopted to supplement or sanction the police powers of the states or of their political subdivisions. It was adopted, for anything disclosed upon its face or otherwise, as an appropriate instrument of the fiscal policy of the nation. The business of trading in things contraband is not the same as the business of trading in legitimate articles of commerce. Clas*298sification by Congress according to the nature of the calling affected by a tax (State Board of Tax Commissioners v. Jackson, 283 U. S. 527) does not cease to be permissible because the line of division between callings to be favored and those to be reproved corresponds with a division between innocence and criminality under the statutes of a state. Power is not abused because the shock of its impact is equitably distributed. The practice of medicine by an unlicensed charlatan may be taxed on a different basis from its practice by a licensed physician, irrespective of the fact that the charlatan is guilty of a crime. The practice of law by a disbarred lawyer may be taxed on a different basis from the practice of the same profession by a lawyer in good standing. With as much if not greater reason a like distinction may be drawn between the licensed and the unlicensed traffic in intoxicating liquors. The underlying principle in all these cases is as clear as it is just. A business that is a nuisance (People v. Vandewater, 250 N. Y. 83; 164 N. E. 864), like any other business that is socially undesirable, may be taxed at a higher rate than one legitimate and useful. Fox v. Standard Oil Co., 294 U. S. 87, 100. By classifying in such a mode Congress is not punishing for a crime against another government. It is not punishing at all. It is laying an excise upon a business conducted in a particular way with notice to the taxpayer that if he embarks upon that business he will be subjected to a special burden. What he pays, if he chooses to go on, is a tax and not a penalty. Nigro v. United States, 276 U. S. 332, 353, 354. Cf. Life & Casualty Insurance Co. v. McCray, 291 U. S. 566, 574.
The judgment of the court, if I interpret the reasoning aright, does not rest upon a ruling that Congress would have gone beyond its power if the purpose that it professed was the purpose truly cherished. The judgment of the court rests upon the ruling that another purpose, not *299professed, may be read beneath the surface, and by the purpose so imputed the statute is destroyed. Thus the process of psychoanalysis has spread to unaccustomed fields. There is a wise and ancient doctrine that a court will not inquire into the motives of a legislative body or assume them to be wrongful. Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch 87, 130; Magnano Co. v. Hamilton, 292 U. S. 40, 44. There is another wise and ancient doctrine that a court will not adjudge the invalidity of a statute except for manifest necessity. Every reasonable doubt must have been explored and extinguished before moving to that grave conclusion. Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 213, 270. The warning sounded by this court in the Sinking-Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700, 718, has lost none of its significance. “Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. One branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger. The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule.” I cannot rid myself of the conviction that in the imputation to the lawmakers of a purpose not professed, this salutary rule of caution is now forgotten or neglected after all the many protestations of its cogency and virtue.
Me. Justice Brandéis and Mr. Justice Stone join in this opinion.