State Ex Rel. Morgan v. Kinnear

The law strives for certainty but has developed few, if any, absolutes. Even in the field of valuing and taxing real estate, it has failed to achieve more than a moderate degree of exactitude. Since statehood and earlier, in the hope of attaining a fair measure of certainty, uni formity and equity, land has been valued for tax purposes in this state at its fair cash market value, an idea made a part of the constitution by the Seventeenth Amendment. The goal has always been: real-estate taxes fairly assessed and uniformly applied.

Last year, the legislature sought to reduce the valuation of…