Independent Warehouses v. Scheele/Dissent Jackson

by Wiley Blount Rutledge

United States Supreme Court

331 U.S. 70

Independent Warehouses  v.  Scheele

 Argued: Dec. 16, 1946. --- Decided: April 14, 1947

Mr. Justice JACKSON, with whom Mr. Chief Justice VINSON joins, dissenting.

The Erie Railroad Company is a common carrier engaged in interstate commerce. By a specific tariff filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission pursuant to the Interstate Commerce Act it and severa other rail carriers have long published a joint and proportional through-tariff on anthracite coal from coal mining stations in Pennsylvania to points in New York and New Jersey. The tariff provides for storage-in-transit services at Coalberg, New Jersey, with reshipment to destination under original agreements. Independent Warehouses, Inc., as contract agent for the Erie, operates these storage-in-transit facilities, has custody of the coal in storage under Erie tariffs as a public warehouseman, and issues warehouse receipts for coal received under railroad waybills. Title to Coalberg is in the Pennsylvania Coal Co., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Erie, and it receives from Independent Warehouses one dollar per year for its lease. The Erie ultimately bears all losses and gets all gains. It is apparent that Coalberg is a facility for storage in transit of coal operated as part of the Erie's interstate transportation service.

The function of the storage in transit is vital. During the summer season, consumption of anthracite coal is light and neither dealers nor consumers in the City of New York and elsewhere are able to store adequate winter reserves. At critical times there would be grave danger of inadequate fuel supplies from interruptions of transportation or of mining operations if stock piles were not accumulated near consuming centers, such as New York, to be drawn upon in periods of peak demand. Therefore, the railroad accepts coal shipments which it mingles in stock piles at Coalberg, near New York, with the privilege to the shipper of ordering the same grade and quantity sent on to destination as needed. When orders for reshipment come, they are drawn from stock piles and delivered. Storage-in-transit is a device to equalize the demands on coal transportation facilities and to provide a reserve supply of coal for periods when consumption exceeds production, to enable movement away from the mines during the period when production exceeds consumption, and to finance future purchases by warehouse receipts issued against coal in transit. It is an essential part of dependable and lowcost transportation of anthracite coal from the mines to the great metropolitan consuming area.

For the privilege of operating this storage-in-transit facility at Coalberg in New Jersey, the municipality demands an annual license fee, in advance, which it is alleged would amount to $20,475. This is merely for the privilege of doing the business. The property used in the operation is also subject to the usual property tax on a valuation of $133,875, which is not in question.

The issue is whether this local privilege tax unconstitutionally burdens interstate commerce. The burden and its substantiality are undeniable, but the Court concludes that these local assessments upon interstate traffic are within the power of the state and, of course, the amount, be it $20,000 per year or $20,000,000 per year, is wholly for the local authorities to determine if their power to tax is upheld.

I cannot agree that the commerce clause of the Federal Constitution has left interstate traffic vulnerable to such local permissions and burdens. Because the immediate impact of the tax is on a railroad, we should not delude ourselves as to its real effect. It is a tax on traffic-on the movement of goods-and its weight is shifted from the carrier to the consumer. There is, of course, a 'local incident,' a stoppage in transit, a reloading. 'Local incidents' of some sort can be identified in all interstate transportation. But in this case local sales or deliveries are insubstantial in amount. The whole operation is incidental to interstate transportation and not to any local business. It is integrated in operation, ownership and management with transportation. It is under the federal commerce power and under Interstate Commerce Commission regulation. The stoppage may be longer than many other stoppages in transit incident to railroading. But the storage of perpetually renewed and continuously drawn-upon stock piles is no longer than necessary to adapt transportation facilities to the needs of an economy, one end of which must engage in continuous production and the other in only seasonal consumption. That a single municipality or state can fasten local tax burdens upon such an incident makes interstate commerce vulnerable to the very barriers and obstructions the commerce clause of the Constitution was designed to end.

The unedifying story of Colonial rivalry in preying upon commerce, which more than any one thing made our Federal Constitution a necessity, is too often told by historians to justify repetition. This tax is reminiscent, however, of some phases of that commercial warfare. In 1787 New York was being supplied with firewood from Connecticut and much farm produce from New Jersey. It seized upon 'local incidents' to lay a tax. Every sloop which came down through Hell Gate, every cart of firewood entering the city, and every market boat rowed across the Hudson River had to pay heavy entrance duties. Then came retaliatory measures. See Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, Chap. IV. These chronic quarrels were destroying the trade of all the rivals, and it was sought by the Constitution to free trade from local burdens and controls.

This New Jersey tax on transportation of New York's coal supply is more dangerous in the end than the old New York tax on its own firewood. In that case the consumers who ultimately would pay the tax also controlled the government which shortsightedly laid the tax. It was a tariff, and the tariff-ridden people could remove it.

But here the ultimate burden of the tax falls on consumers of New York and elsewhere who have no representation in the government which lays the tax and fixes its amount. The authorities who fix the tax will never have to answer to those who pay it. That is the evil of 'taxation without representation.' Here is a tax that falls immediately upon a single taxpayer for it does not appear that any other is similarly affected. It is a tax that falls ultimately on non-residents of the taxing authority. If it is valid, I know of no reason why the community should bear any of its own tax burdens. This is the great vice of these local burdens on interstate movement of goods. It this is not the sort of burden and barrier to a nation's free trade that our commerce clause was designed to end, I should think one would be hard put to find an example. This decision represents a trend that seems to me quite out of the spirit of our history and quite as detrimental to our commercial welfare and unity. See my concurring opinion, Duckworth v. State of Arkansas, 314 U.S. 390, 397, 62 S.Ct. 311, 314, 86 L.Ed. 294, 138 A.L.R. 1144. I am not unaware of the needs of this locality, as of all others, for revenue. But it seems to me that the activities at Coalberg are as fully in the current of interstate commerce as those we held immune from state taxation in Freeman v. Hewit, 329 U.S. 249, 67 S.Ct. 274, and Joseph v. Carter & Weekes Stevedoring Co., 330 U.S. 422, 67 S.Ct. 815. The storage-in-transit service is as essential to maintaining and as much a part of the flow of coal as loading and unloading of goods shipped in interstate commerce is of that commerce. The Constitution laid restraints upon each locality lest their local advantages be pursued at the cost of the commerce on which the prosperity of all depends. I would reverse the judgment.

Notes