Still continuing on that Levin v. Commerce energy case.
Today I finally got a chance to read a bit more. Making progress is good. This time I said a little prayer before beginning to read (a practice I sometimes employed as a law student), hoping that I could make sense of what had initially appeared to be a jumbled mess of gobbledy gook. And after really beginning in earnest-- I started understanding! What a breakthrough.
The issue being discussed is a classic civil procedure issue. It involves federal question jurisdiction stuff, and the give and take between state and federal courts. It took me right back to my first class, my first day, my first year of law school-- Civil procedure with Professor Thomas Lee. Civil procedure is one of those classes that you either hate or you optimistically put up with (i think "love" would have been too strong a word here). But love it or leave it, it is everywhere in everything you do in the law. It is kind of the omnipresent legal subject.
As a I read, I remembered why it was so hard to get your head around civil procedure. Cases weren't necessarily about concrete subjects like a contract being broken, or a criminal event, they were about the way a lawsuit was filed or whether the case could even continue in court, procedurally.
Like fire in my bones I can feel my power returning like Captain Planet. I AM GETTING IT!
So the plaintiffs are independent marketers of gas who are suing the tax commissioner of Ohio for giving them higher taxes to sell gas than some other competitors who offer combined services of selling gas AND installing it. Your basic discriminatory taxation. What relief do they want? They want Ohio to tax other the other guys just as much. They don't want their taxes lowered, they want the others to not get the tax breaks. Doesn't this seem a bit childish to you. Now I know there is a legal reason behind seeking this particular form of relief (something to the effect that you can't decrease a state's tax revenue). So maybe they thought "hey, whats not to like about getting the state more money," but to me it sounds like a child who sees another child getting a treat, and instead of asking for the treat, the child just asserts that it would be more fair if no one gets the treat. "If I can't eat a donut...no one can!"
There has also been quite a bit about the comity doctrine which, within the context of this case, states that a federal court should not interfere with a state legislature's determination of an appropriate tax, and more specifically, should not require an additional tax that the legislature did not deem necessary. Comity, in essence, is about respect and limits.
more later.
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