When the cases in volume 302 were decided the Court comprised the following nine members: In Bogardus v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 302 U.S. 34 (1937), the Supreme Court held that a distribution of money by a corporation to the company's past and present employees who had no current ties with the corporation, in recognition of their past service, was a non-taxable gift and not "compensation for personal services".

The issue was whether a local ("insular") law could be pre-empted by the Commerce clause of the United States Constitution.

Prosecutors appealed per Connecticut law and won a new trial in which Palko was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

The Court had previously held, in the Slaughterhouse cases, that the protections of the Bill of Rights should not be applied to the states under the Privileges or Immunities clause, but Palko argued that since the infringed right fell under a due process protection, Connecticut still acted in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Applying the subjective case-by-case approach (known as selective incorporation), the Court upheld Palko's conviction on the basis that the double jeopardy appeal was not "essential to a fundamental scheme of ordered liberty."

In 1969 the Court overruled Palko by incorporating the protection against double jeopardy with its ruling in Benton v. Maryland.