ood faith of the law[755] it cannot
stand either under the commerce clause or the Fourteenth Amendment.[756]
The State is not bound to adjust the charge after the fact, but may, in
anticipation, fix what the legislature deems to be a fair fee for the
expected service, the presumption being that if, in practice, the sum
charged appears inordinate the legislative body will reduce it in the
light of experience.[757] Such a statute may, in spite of the
presumption of validity, show on its face that some part of the exaction
is to be used for a purpose other than the legitimate one of supervision
and regulation and may, for that reason, be void.[758] And a statute
fair upon its face may be shown to be void and unenforceable on account
of its actual operation.[759] If the exaction be clearly excessive it is
bad _in toto_ and the State cannot collect any part of it."[760]

Dominance of Congress

The Supreme Court has never forgotten the lesson which was administered
it by the act of Congress of August 31, 1852,[761] which pronounced the
Wheeling Bridge "a lawful structure," thereby setting aside the Court's
determination to the contrary earlier the same year.[762] This lesson,
stated in the Court's own language thirty years later, was, "It is
Congress, and not the Judicial Department, to which the Constitution has
given the power to regulate commerce * * *."[763] A parallel to the
Wheeling Bridge episode occurred in 1945.

THE McCARRAN ACT: REGULATION OF INSURANCE

Less than a year after the ruling in United States _v._ South-Eastern
Underwriters Association[764] that insurance transactions across State
lines constituted interstate commerce, thereby logically establishing
their immunity from discriminatory State taxation, Congress passed the
McCarran Act[765] authorizing State regulation and taxation of the
insurance business; and in Prudential Insurance Co. _v._ Benjamin,[766]
a statute of South Carolina which imposed on foreign insurance
companies, as a condition of their doing business in the State, an
annual tax of three per cent of premiums from business done in South
Carolina, while imposing no similar tax on local corporations, was
sustained. "Obviously," said Justice Rutledge for the Court, "Congress'
purpose was broadly to give support to the existing and future State
systems for regulating and taxing the business of insurance. This was
done in two ways. One was by removing obstructions which might be
thought