Felix Frankfurter

“ When a State seeks to tax what is to leave the United States, we may agree that its privilege to do so ceases when the export enters 'the export stream.' But the problem for decision is to determine when that point has been reached. ”

“ The Supreme Court of California may have exercised a right under California law to draw its own inferences from uncontroverted facts and thus have found that what was called a 'plant' was really only a collection of machinery and equipment. If that is what it did, we would not, of course, reinstate the findings of the Superior Court merely in order to raise an interesting question under the Export-Import Clause. Affirmance would be amply supported by bare citation of cases holding that intent to export, no matter how firm, is not by itself enough to confer immunity from taxation. ”

“ In the case of such an export, so runs the argument, it is a degree of certainty fully equivalent to the certainty marked by delivery to a common carrier of a bulk cargo, like oil or grain or timber, for whatever part of a cargo of the latter sort has not actually left the country can even then be diverted and separately sold without loss in value either to the diverted or to the exported part. ”