Corliss v. Bowers’s Empirical Analysis
281 U.S. 376 · 1930
Citation profile
793 federal appellate · 38 district · 41 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,698 later decisions (89 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2020 · most notably Commissioner v. Sunnen (1948), Helvering v. Clifford (1940)
793 federal appellate · 38 district · 41 state decisions — followed in 13 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedCorliss v. Bowers (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Reinecke v. Northern Trust Co. · Chase Nat Bank of City of New York v. United States · Saltonstall v. Saltonstall · Corliss v. Bowers
Cited together with Helvering v. Horst · Helvering v. Clifford · Lucas v. Earl · Burnet v. Wells · Harrison v. Schaffner
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 1,698 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The income that is subject to a man's unfettered command and that he is free to enjoy at his own option may be taxed to him as his income, whether he sees fit to enjoy it or not.”
74 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Where the grantor of a trust has, at any time during the taxable year, either alone or in conjunction with any person not a beneficiary of the trust, the power to revest in himself title to any part of the corpus of the trust, then the income of such part of the trust for such taxable year shall be included in computing the net income of the grantor.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * The legal estate was in the trustee and the equitable interest in the wife.”
1 later decision 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.