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HYLTON V. UNITED STATES

HYLTON V. UNITED STATES (1796). The question of whether a tax on carriages imposed by an act of Congress (5 June 1794) was a direct tax and therefore subject to the constitutional rule of apportionment to the states, was decided in the negative. Three justices—Samuel Chase, William Paterson, and James Iredell—sitting without their colleagues, decided unanimously that the tax was an excise or duty and not a direct tax. The case is chiefly important for the implied assumption that the Court had the authority to review the constitutionality of an act of Congress.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brown, Roger H. Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Currie, David P. The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period, 1789–1801. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Phillips Bradley/A. R.

See also Income Tax Cases; Judicial Review; Taxation.