Oil Exporter’s Oil-Spill Fund  Payment an ‘Unconstitutional Export Tax,’ Court Holds. But the Decision Goes Without Precedent 

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has decided that payments by oil exporters into an oil-spill remediation fund are unconstitutional export taxes.Or at least Judge James C. Ho, writing singularly for a would-be majority, held.Judge Jacques Weiner concurred in the judgment without opinion and Judge James Graves dissented.And perhaps the shame of it – an opinion without heft – is that Judge Ho in a five-page windup that might have been longer than Lin-Manuel Miranda’s original Hamilton script made sure that readers who skipped long lines and high prices would not escape an…