Harlan F. Stone

“ Storage of the gasoline is a preliminary step to such use in interstate commerce. The tax is assailed both on the ground that it is imposed on the gasoline while still a subject of interstate commerce in the course of transportation from points of origin to points outside the state of Tennessee, and on the ground that it is in effect a tax upon the use of the gasoline in appellant's business as an interstate carrier, and is thus an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce. ”

“ As the prayer for relief by injunction is not a necessary prerequisite to the exercise of judicial power, allegations of threatened irreparable injury which are material only if an injunction is asked, may likewise be dispensed with if, in other respects, the controversy presented is, as in this case, real and substantial. ”

“ This statute has often been considered by the highest court of Tennessee, which has consistently held that its provisions may only be invoked when the complainant asserts rights which are challenged by the defendant, and presents for decision an actual controversy to which he is a party, capable of final adjudication by the judgment or decree to be rendered. ”

“ Section 1 of the Tennessee Declaratory Judgments Act confers jurisdiction on courts of record 'to declare rights * * * whether or not further relief is or could be claimed' and provides that 'no action or proceeding shall be open to objection on the ground that a declaratory judgment or decree is prayed for. ”

“ Appellant brought suit in the Chancery Court of Davidson county, Tenn., under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act of that state, [1] chapter 29, Tennessee Public Acts 1923, to secure a judicial declaration that a state excise tax levied on the storage of gasoline, chapter 58, Tennessee Public Acts 1923, as amended by chapter 67, Tennessee Public Acts 1925, is, as applied to appellant, invalid under the commerce clause and the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution. ”

“ The power to tax property, the sum of all the rights and powers incident to ownership, necessarily includes the power to tax its constituent elements. See Bromley v. McCaughn, 280 U.S. 124, 136-138, 50 S.Ct. 46, 74 L.Ed. 226. Hence there can be no valid objection to the taxation of the exercise of any right or power incident to appellant's ownership of the gasoline, which falls short of a tax directly imposed on its use in interstate commerce, deemed forbidden in Helson v. Kentucky, supra. ”

“ It is said that the uniform act is in force in sixteen of the states and Puerto Rico, and that similar statutes have been enacted in thirteen states, Hawaii, and the Philippines. For a discussion of the history of this procedural device in France, Germany, Spain, Spanish America, Scotland, England, and India, as well as in the United States, and the types of controversies in which it has been invoked, see Edwin M. Borchard, 'The Declaratory Judgment-A Needed Procedural Reform,' 28 Yale L.J. 1, 105 ”

“ Taxes said to burden interstate commerce directly when levied upon or measured by the operation of interstate commerce or gross receipts derived from it, are beyond the state taxing power, East Ohio Gas Co. ”