Justice Rutledge and State Taxation of Interstate Commerce

When the late Wiley Blount Rutledge was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1943, an erstwhile law school associate' predicted that the former law school dean 2 would bring to the high court a refreshing clarity of thought and expression.Justice Rutledge did just that in giving new judicial interpretation to the age-old problem of state taxation of interstate commerce.However voluminous the "essays" he penned and however close they bordered on judicial legislating, the decisions of the late justice were distinguished for a consistency and boldness of approach 3 that too often was lacking on the part of the full court during the past decade.Projected onto the national scene during a period marked by repeated changes of court personnel and almost as many changes in court philosophy, Justice Rutledge found constant need for all the judicial art that had been ascribed to him: "The careful analysis of facts, the appreciation of the interests at stake, the identification of the legal issues involved, the attention to the purposes underlying the law, and, finally, the decision in terms of the ends to be served."4 These are the essentials of the judicial art of a scholar, and they were the modus operandi of the court's severest critic during his six years on the high court.Justice Rutledge's primary thesis was that consequences, not captions, should be determinative of the constitutionality of any piece of legislation.This was