Hill v. Wallace

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Hill v. Wallace

Argued January 11, 1922
Decided May 15, 1922

Full case name:	Hill et al. v. Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture et al.

Citations:	259 U.S. 44; 42 S. Ct. 453, 66 L. Ed. 822

Holding

The Futures Trading Act of 1921, approved August 24, 1921. 42 Stat. 187, c. 86, which attempted to institute Federal regulation of grain futures contract trading by imposing a prohibitive tax on futures contracts traded on any market other than those which met the requirements of the statute and were regulated by the Secretary of Agriculture was an unconstitutional exercise of the taxing power of Congress.

Court membership

Chief Justice: William Howard Taft
Associate Justices: Joseph McKenna, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William R. Day, Willis Van Devanter, Mahlon Pitney, James Clark McReynolds, Louis Brandeis, George Sutherland

Case opinions

Majority by: Taft
Joined by: Brandeis

Laws applied

US Constitution Article I, Sec. 8.

Hill v. Wallace, 259 U.S. 44 (1922), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the Future Trading Act is unconstitutional use of Congress's taxing power.

The Futures Trading Act of 1921, approved August 24, 1921. 42 Stat. 187, c. 86 attempted to institute Federal regulation of grain futures contract trading by imposing a prohibitive tax on futures contracts traded on any market other than those which met the requirements of the statute and were regulated by the Secretary of Agriculture. The court found it was an unconstitutional exercise of the taxing power of Congress. Congress responded to the Court's decision by passing the Grain Futures Act in September of 1922 based on the Commerce Clause. The Grain Futures Act was held to be constitutional by the Court in Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. Olsen (1923)