80
Opinion of Scalia, J.
span) that they can hardly be said to foster stability or to engender reliance deserving of stare decisis protection.
I have not hitherto had occasion to consider an asserted application of the negative Commerce Clause to commerce "with foreign Nations"—as opposed to commerce "among the several States"—but the basic point that the Commerce Clause is a power conferred upon Congress (and not a power denied to the States) obviously applies to all portions of the Clause. I assume that, for reasons of stare decisis, I must apply the same categorical prohibition against laws that facially discriminate against foreign commerce as I do against laws that facially discriminate against interstate commerce—though it may be that the rule is not as deeply rooted in our precedents for the former field. I need not reach that issue in the present case, since the Tennessee tax is nothing more than a garden-variety state sales tax that clearly does not discriminate against foreign commerce. As with the Interstate Commerce Clause, however, stare decisis cannot bind me to a completely indeterminate test such as the "four-factored test plus two" found in Japan Line, Ltd. v. County of Los Angeles, 441 U. S. 434, 446-451 (1979), which combines Complete Auto with two additional tests.
Japan Line, like Complete Auto and Pike, ultimately asks courts to make policy judgments—essentially, whether non-discriminatory state regulations of various sorts are "worth" their effects upon interstate or foreign commerce. One element of Japan Line, however, the so-called "speak with one voice" test, has a peculiar effect that underscores the inappropriateness of our engagement in this enterprise of applying a negative Commerce Clause. Applied literally, this test would always be satisfied, since no state law can ever actually "prevent this Nation from 'speaking with one voice' in regulating foreign commerce," Japan Line, supra, at 451 (emphasis added), or "interfere with [the United States'] ability 'to speak with one voice,' " Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 24 (emphasis added). The National Govern-
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