Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, 520 U.S. 564, 48 (1997)

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Cite as: 520 U. S. 564 (1997)

Thomas, J., dissenting

or another, every Member of the current Court 2 and a goodly number of our predecessors 3 have at least recognized these problems, if not been troubled by them.4 Because the

2 See, e. g., C & A Carbone, Inc. v. Clarkstown, 511 U. S. 383, 401 (1994) (O'Connor, J., concurring in judgment) ("The scope of the dormant Commerce Clause is a judicial creation"); Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, 504 U. S. 298, 309 (1992) (Stevens, J., writing for a unanimous Court) (recognizing that the Commerce Clause "says nothing about the protection of interstate commerce in the absence of any action by Congress"); Wyoming v. Oklahoma, 502 U. S. 437, 461-462 (1992) (Scalia, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and Thomas, J., dissenting) (describing the "negative Commerce Clause" as "nontextual"); Kassel v. Consolidated Freightways Corp. of Del., 450 U. S. 662, 706 (1981) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) ("[T]he jurisprudence of the 'negative side' of the Commerce Clause remains hopelessly confused"); cf. U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U. S. 779, 797, n. 12 (1995) (Stevens, J., joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ.) ("[T]he Constitution is clearly silent on the subject of state legislation that discriminates against interstate commerce").

3 See, e. g., Wardair Canada Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Revenue, 477 U. S. 1, 17 (1986) (Burger, C. J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (referring to "the cloudy waters of this Court's 'dormant Commerce Clause' doctrine"); Philadelphia v. New Jersey, 437 U. S. 617, 623 (1978) (Stewart, J.) ("The bounds of [the restraints imposed by the Commerce Clause itself, in the absence of federal legislation], appear nowhere in the words of the Commerce Clause"); Northwestern States Portland Cement Co. v. Minnesota, 358 U. S. 450, 457, 458 (1959) (Clark, J.) (referring to our negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence as a "tangled underbrush" and a "quagmire" (internal quotation marks omitted)); H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc. v. Du Mond, 336 U. S. 525, 534-535 (1949) (Jackson, J.) (describing the negative Commerce Clause as filling in one of the "great silences of the Constitution"); McCarroll v. Dixie Greyhound Lines, Inc., 309 U. S. 176, 189 (1940) (Black, J., joined by Frankfurter and Douglas, JJ., dissenting) (criticizing the negative Commerce Clause as arising out of "[s]pasmodic and unrelated instances of litigation [that] cannot afford an adequate basis for the creation of integrated national rules" that "Congress alone" is positioned to develop).

4 Scholarly commentary, too, has been critical of our negative Commerce Clause jurisprudence. See D. Currie, The Constitution in the Supreme Court: The First Hundred Years 1789-1888, p. 234 (1985) (describing the negative Commerce Clause as "arbitrary, conclusory, and irreconcilable with the constitutional text"); see also, e. g., L. Tribe, American Constitu-

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