Cite as: 507 U. S. 60 (1993)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
is indistinguishable from a type of law previously held unconstitutional by this Court.2 These acknowledgments of precedent serve the principal purposes of stare decisis, which are to protect reliance interests and to foster stability in the law. I do not believe, however, that either of those purposes is significantly furthered by continuing to apply the vague and open-ended tests that are the current content of our negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence, such as the four-factor test set forth in Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Brady, 430 U. S. 274, 279 (1977), or the "balancing" approach of Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc., 397 U. S. 137 (1970). Unlike the prohibition on rank discrimination against interstate commerce, which has long and consistently appeared in the precedents of this Court, see New Energy Co. of Ind. v. Limbach, 486 U. S. 269, 273 (1988), those tests are merely the latest in a series of doctrines that we have successively applied, and successively discarded, over the years, to invalidate nondiscriminatory state taxation and regulation—including, for example, the "original package" doctrine, see Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100 (1890), the "uniformity" test, see Case of the State Freight Tax, 15 Wall. 232, 279-280 (1873); cf. Cooley v. Board of Wardens of Port of Philadelphia ex rel. Society for Relief of Distressed Pilots, 12 How. 299, 319 (1852), the "directness" test, see Hall v. DeCuir, 95 U. S. 485, 488-489 (1878), and the "privilege of doing interstate business" rule, see Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. O'Connor, 340 U. S. 602, 609 (1951). Like almost all their predecessors, these latest tests are so uncertain in their application (and in their anticipated life-ury, 498 U. S. 358, 387 (1991) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); Amerada Hess Corp. v. Director, Div. of Taxation, N. J. Dept. of Treasury, 490 U. S. 66, 80 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment); American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Scheiner, 483 U. S. 266, 304 (1987) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
2 See American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. Smith, 496 U. S. 167, 204 (1990); Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U. S. 298, 320-321 (1992) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
79
Page: Index Previous 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007