The U.S. Supreme Court case Western Maryland Railway Co. v. Rogan et al., 1950, revolved around a dispute between the Western Maryland Railway Company and the State Tax Commission of Maryland regarding taxation on railway properties in the state of Maryland. The railway company argued that its property was being assessed at a higher rate than other commercial and industrial properties within the state, which it claimed violated both federal statutory law and constitutional principles of equal protection under law as well as due process rights. The court ruled in favor of the railway company, finding that there was indeed discriminatory treatment against interstate commerce by assessing railroad property at full value while most other real estate was assessed at less than half its actual value for tax purposes.

In the dissenting opinion for Western Maryland Railway Co. v. Rogan et al., Justice Frankfurter argued that the majority's decision to strike down a tax imposed by Maryland on out-of-state corporations was an overreach of judicial power, infringing upon states' rights to manage their own taxation systems. He contended that there was no constitutional basis for invalidating such taxes and criticized the Court's reliance on vague notions of 'fairness'. Furthermore, he pointed out inconsistencies in how interstate commerce had been treated in previous cases and suggested this inconsistency undermined legal certainty. In his view, it should be up to Congress rather than courts to determine whether state taxes unduly burdened interstate commerce or not.