WOE UNTO YOU, LAWYERS!

“jurisdiction” to tax involves an extremely practical problem too. From the angle of
the state governments, the problem is simply: -- Now that the prople and companies
and property we have to collect taxes from in order to keep running are spreading
themselves over a dozen or 48 states, as most of them are today, how are we
suppposed to keep up with them and what kind of taxes can we impose on them
without either chasing them out of our reach entirely or else going so easy on them
that we don’t collect enough money to keep going? From the angle of the taxpayers,
whether people or companies, the problem is simply: -- Just because our business or
our property spreads over a lot of states, is it fair or right that every one of those
states, or most of them, should soak us with the same kind of taxes so that we have to
pay tribute a dozen times for doing, or owning, one thing? Whether it is income
taxes, property taxes, or inheritance taxes that are involved, the basic practical
problem is the same.
Toward the efficient solution of that problem, the Supreme Court’s
“jurisdiction” principles contribute, literally, nothing. A categorical statement that
the Fourteenth Amendment denies to any state but the state of domicile (what is
domicile, who is she – these days?) the “jurisdiction” to impose an inheritance tax on
the transfer of intangible property (when is intangible property not intangible, as
with Max Senior’s trust certificates?) may sound very learned. As may the rule that
acquisition of a business site within a state by intangibles gives even a
non-domiciliary state “jurisdiction” to tax. But neither the formulation nor the
application of such principles and their sub-principles and the exceptions sheds even
the dimmest light on the basic difficulties of the state governments and the
taxpayers.
The fact is that the Supreme Court has neither the power nor the ability to
find, for the problem in government here involved, a thorough or intelligent or
workable solution. Which fact does not bother the Court in the slightest degree. It
just goes merrily on laying down and applying its silly little abstract rules about
“jurisdiction” to tax. And giving each of those silly little rules as much potency and
prestige as if it had been adopted by the people as an amendment to the Constitution.
As in Senior v. Braden, so in all the “jurisdiction” to tax cases. The meat of
the real problem is passed by; The Law sinks its teeth into the fluff of abstract logic.
As in the “jurisdiction” to tax cases, so in all the cases under the “due process”
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As in the cases under the “due process”
clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, so in all Constitutional Law. As in
Constitutional Law, so in all the lesser branches of legal learning. So in the whole of
The Law. And only the solemn and mystifying mumbo-jumbo of legal language
keeps the non-lawyers form catching on.
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