Hinson v. Lott/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

75 U.S. 148

Hinson  v.  Lott

In the argument of this case no reference has been made to any other section than the 13th of the statute in question.

If this section stood alone in the legislation of Alabama on the subject of taxing liquors, the effect of it would be that all such liquors brought into the State from other States and offered for sale, whether in the original casks by which they came into the State or by retail in smaller quantities, would be subject to a heavy tax, while the same class of liquors manufactured in the State would escape the tax. It is obvious that the right to impose any such discriminating tax, if it exist at all, cannot be limited in amount, and that a tax under the same authority can as readily be laid which would amount to an absolute prohibition to sell liquors introduced from without while the privilege would remain unobstructed in regard to articles made in the State. If this can be done in reference to liquors, it can be done with reference to all the products of a sister State, and in this mode one State can establish a complete system of non-intercourse in her commercial relations with all the other States of the Union.

We have decided, in the case of Woodruff v. Parham, immediately preceding, that the constitutional provision against taxing imports by the States does not extend to articles brought from a sister State. But if this were otherwise, and we could hold that as to such articles the rule laid down in Brown v. Maryland, concerning foreign imports, applied, it would prevent but a very little of the evil which we have described; for, under the decision in that case, it is only while the goods so imported were held in the original unbroken condition in which they came into the State, and in the hands of the first importer, that they would be protected from State taxation. As soon as they passed out of his hands into use, or were offered for sale among the community at large, they would be liable to a tax which might render their use or sale impossible.

But while the case has been argued here with a principal reference to the supposed prohbition against taxing imports, it is to be seem from the opinion of the Supreme Court of Alabama delivered in this case, that the clause of the Constitution which gives to Congress the right to regulate commerce among the States, was supposed to present a serious objection to the validity of the Alabama statute. Nor can it be doubted that a tax which so seriously affects the interchange of commodities between the States as to essentially impede or seriously interfere with it, is a regulation of commerce. And it is also true, as conceded in that opinion, that Congress has the same right to regulate commerce among the States that it has to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and that whenever it exercises that power, all conflicting State laws must give way, and that if Congress had made any rugulation covering the matter in question we need inquire no further.

That court seems to have relieved itself of the objection by holding that the tax imposed by the State of Alabama was an exercise of the concurrent right of regulating commerce remaining with the States until some regulation on the subject had been made by Congress. But, assuming the tax to be, as we have supposed, a discriminating tax, levied exclusively upon the products of sister States; and looking to the consequences which the exercise of this power may produce if it be once conceded, amounting, as we have seen, to a total abolition of all commercial intercourse between the States, under the cloak of the taxing power, we are not prepared to admit that a State can exercise such a power, though Congress may have failed to act on the subject in any manner whatever.

The question of the nature of the power to regulate commerce and how far that power is exclusively vested in Congress, has always been a difficult one, and has seldom been construed in this court with unanimity. In the very latest case on this subject, Crandall v. Nevada, the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Clifford held that a tax on persons passing through the State by railroads or other public conveyances was forbidden to the States by that provision of the Constitution proprio vigore, and in the absence of any legislation by Congress on the subject; while a majority of the court, preferring to place the invalidity of the tax on other grounds, merely expressed their inability, on a review of the cases previously decided, to take that view of the question. But in that case the opinion of the court in Cooley v. The Port Wardens was approved, which holds that there is a class of legislation of a general nature, affecting the commercial interests of all the States, which, from its essential character, is National, and which must, so far as it affects these interests belong exclusively to the Federal government.

The tax in the case before us, if it were of the character we have suggested, discriminating adversely to the products of all the other States in favor of those of Alabama, and involving a principle which might lead to actual commercial non-intercourse, would, in our opinion, belong to that class of legislation and be forbidden by the clause of the Constitution just mentioned.

But a careful examination of that statute shows that it is not obnoxious to this objection. A tax is imposed by the previous sections of the same act of fifty cents per gallon on all whiskey and all brandy from fruits manufactured in the State. In order to collect this tax, every distiller is compelled to take our a license and to make regular returns of the amount of distilled spirits manufactured by him. On this he pays fifty cents per gallon. So that when we come in the light of these earlier sections of the act, to examine the 13th, 14th, and 15th sections, it is found that no greater tax is laid on liquors brought into the State than on those manufactured within it. And it is clear that whereas collecting the tax of the distiller was supposed to be the most expedient mode of securing its payment, as to liquors manufactured within the State, the tax on those who sold liquors brought in from other States was only the complementary provision necessary to make the tax equal on all liquors sold in the State. As the effect of the act is such as we have described, and it institutes no legislation which discriminates against the products of sister States, but merely subjects them to the same rate of taxation which similar articles pay that are manufactured within the State, we do not see in it an attempt to regulate commerce, but an appropriate and legitimate exercise of the taxing power of the States.

DECREE AFFIRMED.

Mr. Justice NELSON dissented. See his opinion in the preceding case, supra, p. 140.

Notes