326
Opinion of White, J.
ments in the Complete Auto test is also unpersuasive. See ante, at 313-314, n. 7 (citing Trinova Corp. v. Michigan Dept. of Treasury, 498 U. S. 358, 373 (1991)). Instead of explaining the doctrinal origins of the Commerce Clause nexus requirement, the majority breezily announces the rule and moves on to other matters. See ante, at 313-314. In my view, before resting on the assertion that the Constitution mandates inquiry into two readily distinct "nexus" requirements, it would seem prudent to discern the origins of the "nexus" requirement in order better to understand whether the Court's concern traditionally has been with the fairness of a State's tax or some other value.
The cases from which the Complete Auto Court derived the nexus requirement in its four-part test convince me that the issue of "nexus" is really a due process fairness inquiry. In explaining the sources of the four-part inquiry in Complete Auto, the Court relied heavily on Justice Rutledge's separate concurring opinion in Freeman v. Hewit, 329 U. S. 249 (1946), the case whose majority opinion the Complete Auto Court was in the process of comprehensively disavowing. Instead of the formalistic inquiry into whether the State was taxing interstate commerce, the Complete Auto Court adopted the more functionalist approach of Justice Rutledge in Freeman. See Complete Auto, 430 U. S., at 280-281. In conducting his inquiry, Justice Rutledge used language that by now should be familiar, arguing that a tax was unconstitutional if the activity lacked a sufficient connection to the State to give "jurisdiction to tax," Freeman, supra, at 271; or if the tax discriminated against interstate commerce; or if the activity was subjected to multiple tax burdens. 329 U. S., at 276-277. Justice Rutledge later refined these principles in Memphis Natural Gas Co. v. Stone, 335 U. S. 80 (1948), in which he described the principles that the Complete Auto Court would later substantially adopt: "[I]t is enough for me to sustain the tax imposed in this case that it is one clearly within the state's power to lay insofar
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