For many years, the Supreme Court has applied different frameworks in determining whether state regulations or taxes violate the dormant Commerce Clause. A state regulation—even when it does not discriminate against interstate commerce or operate extraterritorially—is unconstitutional if it...

Perhaps the biggest controversy in state and local taxation today concerns the constitutional authority of the states to impose taxes on goods purchased over the Internet. Some argue that the current, bright-line rule of quot;physical presencequot; is the appropriate standard for determining a...

Most scholars agree that federalism was central to the Rehnquist Court's constitutional agenda. But there is a part of the federalism story that has been largely overlooked: the Court's decisions involving the structural constraints on state governments, the most significant of which are...

The general rule of federal question jurisdiction does not extend to cases in which plaintiffs challenge the lawfulness of a state or local tax. In recent years, the Supreme Court has expressed its belief that this lack of a federal forum should not concern taxpayers, as the federal and state...

Currently, a total of twenty-eight states are challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in federal court. Their principal claims are that the PPACA's regulation of the states violates their independent sovereignty, and that the Act's minimum...

The author suggests that state courts are not biased against taxpayers that seek the protection of Public Law 86-272. Some taxpayers have been dissatisfied that state courts are generally the only forum available to litigate claims that state or local taxes violate federal law