Knowlton v. Moore’s Empirical Analysis
178 U.S. 41 · 1900
Citation profile
364 federal appellate · 121 district · 258 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,292 later decisions (193 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably Everson v. Board of Education (1947), Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell (1934)
364 federal appellate · 121 district · 258 state decisions — followed in 45 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Edye v. Robertson · Magoun v. Illinois Trust & Savings Bank · Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.
Cited together with Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad · New York Trust Co. v. Eisner · Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. · High v. Coyne · Nichols v. Coolidge
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 1,292 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * Although different modes of assessing such duties prtwail, and although they have different accidental names, such as probate duties, stamp duties, taxes on the transaction, or the act of passing of an estate or a succession, legacy taxes, eslate taxes or privilege taxes, nevertheless tax laws of this nature in all countries rest in their essence upon the principal that death is the generating source from which the particular taxing power takes its being and that it is the power to transmit, or the transmission from the dead to the living, on which such taxes are more immediately rested.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We are, therefore, bound to give heed to the rule, that where a particular construction of a statute will occasion great inconvenience or produce inequality and injustice, that view is to be avoided if another and more reasonable interpretation is present in the statute.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The review which we have made exhibits the fact that taxes imposed with reference to the ability of the person upon whom the burden is placed to bear the same have been levied from the foundation of the government. So, also, some authoritative thinkers, and a number of economic writers, contend that a progressive tax is more just and equal than a proportional one. In the absence of constitutional limitation, the question whether it is or not is legislative and not judicial." Id.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.