Porter v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
288 U.S. 436 · 1933
Citation profile
176 federal appellate · 17 district · 27 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 459 later decisions (29 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2017 · most notably Sanford's Estate v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1939), Burnet v. Wells (1933)
176 federal appellate · 17 district · 27 state decisions — followed in 10 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
reviewedPorter v. Commissioner (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on United States v. Wells · Reinecke v. Northern Trust Co. · Nichols v. Coolidge · Chase Nat Bank of City of New York v. United States · Heiner v. Donnan
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 459 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The value of the gross estate of the decedent shall be determined by including the value at the time of his death of all property. * * * “(d) Revocable transfers. “(2) Transfers on or prior to June 22. 1936. “To the extent of any interest therein of which the decedent has at any time made a transfer, by trust or otherwise, where the enjoyment thereof was subject at the date of his death to any change through the exercise of a power, * * * by the decadent * * * to alter, amend, or revoke, * *”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But the reservation here may not be ignored for, while subject to the specified limitation, it made the settlor dominant in respect of other dispositions of both corpus and income. His death terminated that control, ended the possibility of any change by him, and was, in respect of title to the property in question, the source of valuable assurance passing from the dead to the living. That is the event on which Congress based the inclusion of property so transferred in the gross estate as a step in the calculation to ascertain the amount of what in section 301 [ 44 Stat. 69 ] is called the net estate. Thus was reached what it reasonably might deem a substitute for testamentary disposition. United States v. Wells, 283 U.S. 102, 116 , 51 S.Ct. 446 , 75 L.Ed. 867 . There is no doubt as to the power of Congress so to do.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The net estate upon the transfer of which the tax is imposed is not limited to property that passes from decedent at death. [Section 203S] requires to be included in the calculation all property previously transferred by decedent, the enjoyment of which remains at the time of his death subject to any change by the exertion of a power by himself alone or in conjunction with another. [Porter v. Commissioner, 288 U.S. 436 (1933).]”
3 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.