Cite as: 504 U. S. 298 (1992)
Opinion of White, J.
as any limitation of due process or 'jurisdiction to tax' in that sense is concerned; it is nondiscriminatory . . . ; [it] is duly apportioned . . . ; and cannot be repeated by any other state." 335 U. S., at 96-97 (concurring opinion) (footnotes omitted).
By the time the Court decided Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. v. Minnesota, 358 U. S. 450 (1959), Justice Rutledge was no longer on the Court, but his view of the nexus requirement as grounded in the Due Process Clause was decisively adopted. In rejecting challenges to a state tax based on the Due Process and Commerce Clauses, the Court stated: "The taxes imposed are levied only on that portion of the taxpayer's net income which arises from its activities within the taxing State. These activities form a sufficient 'nexus between such a tax and transactions within a state for which the tax is an exaction.' " Id., at 464 (citation omitted). The Court went on to observe that "[i]t strains reality to say, in terms of our decisions, that each of the corporations here was not sufficiently involved in local events to forge 'some definite link, some minimum connection' sufficient to satisfy due process requirements." Id., at 464-465 (quoting Miller Brothers Co. v. Maryland, 347 U. S. 340, 344-345 (1954)). When the Court announced its four-part synthesis in Complete Auto, the nexus requirement was definitely traceable to concerns grounded in the Due Process Clause, and not the Commerce Clause, as the Court's discussion of the doctrinal antecedents for its rule made clear. See Complete Auto, supra, at 281-282, 285. For the Court now to assert that our Commerce Clause jurisprudence supports a separate notion of nexus is without precedent or explanation.
Even were there to be such an independent requirement under the Commerce Clause, there is no relationship between the physical-presence/nexus rule the Court retains and Commerce Clause considerations that allegedly justify it. Perhaps long ago a seller's "physical presence" was a sufficient part of a trade to condition imposition of a tax on
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