Harold Hitz Burton

“ If it is indeed true, as the Court holds, that one who is engaged both in intrastate and interstate commerce has no standing to challenge a tax such as this under the Commerce Clause because the State might, perchance, extract the same dollars and cents from him even if he engaged in intrastate commerce alone, then this Court has long been entertaining, ignorantly and wastefully, cases which it had no power to hear. ”

“ The taxation and licensing by the States of commingled, though not necessarily inextricably commingled, intrastate and interstate business, or of the instrumentalities of such commingled business, have again and again been considered here to determine whether such an assertion of the taxing power by the States had, in its practical incidence, cast an inadmissible burden upon the interstate aspect of the joint enterprise. ”

“ But whether appellants are so affected is the very question at the threshold of the constitutional issue: is the tax forbidden by the Commerce Clause. Being engaged in interstate commerce, appellants invoke the Commerce Clause against an Illinois statute which affects them because it taxes them. ”