Waters v. Harrell’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

2 state decisions

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 2 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““[W]e are confronted with the definitions of the word ‘widow’ as stated in the various dictionaries, to wit: ‘An unmarried woman whose husband is dead;’ ‘one who has lost her husband by death, and who has not taken another;’ ‘whose husband is dead, and who remains unmarried, — and by the argument, based on these definitions, that in order to be a widow she must remain unmarried. The question at issue is not whether these definitions are correct, but what is the legal import, meaning, effect, and object of the words ‘wife or widow of a son,’ or ‘husband of a daughter,’ as these words are used in this and other statutes of this state, or, if the language made use of to express the intention of those who prepared and passed the law is not clear, what construction will best accomplish the design. The fact that the statute itself has not made remarriage during the lifetime of the ancestor a bar to exemption from the tax is some evidence that it was not so intended to operate, for in many cases such persons would have a family to support which would be benefited by the exemption, and this fact may have been one of the reasons that influenced the legislature to adopt this provision. Again, a legacy would not ordinarily be given to the ‘widow’ of a son, or to the ‘husband’ of a deceased daughter, were it not for the fact that the relation of son-in-law or daughter-in-law contin ued or was supposed to ‘exist by legal fiction, if not in fact. A woman, though the wife of another, is sti”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Indiana Department of State Revenue, Inheritance Tax Division v. Evans