Felix Frankfurter

“ If Connecticut in fact sought to tax the right to engage in interstate commerce, a long course of constitutional history and 'an unbroken line of decisions' would indeed be brought into question. But even if Connecticut seeks merely to levy a tax on the net income of this interstate trucking business for activities attributed to Connecticut, questions under the Commerce Clause still remain if only because of what the court below called 'ingenious provisions as to allocation of net income in the case of business carried on partly without the state.' 139 F.2d 809, 812. ”

“ Once doubts purely local to the Constitution and laws of Connecticut are resolved against the petitioner there are at stake in this case questions of moment touching the taxing powers of the States and their relation to the overriding national interests embodied in the Commerce Clause. This is so whether the issue be as broad and as bare as the District Court and Judge Learned Hand formulated it, or whether the Connecticut statute carries a more restricted meaning. ”

“ If there is one doctrine more deeply rooted than any other in the process of constitutional adjudication, it is that we ought not to pass on questions of constitutionality-here the distribution of the taxing power as between the State and the Nation-unless such adjudication is unavoidable. ”