Brush v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

70 federal appellate · 10 district · 108 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 261 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““* * * And to say that, because the city makes a charge for furnishing water to private consumers, it follows .that the operation of the water works is corporate and not governmental, is to beg the question. What the city is engaged in doing in that respect is rather rendering a service than selling a commodity. If that service be governmental, it does not become private because a charge is made for it, or a profit realized. A state, for example, constructs and operates a highway. It may, if it choose, exact compensation for its use from those who travel over it (see Bingaman v. Golden Eagle Western Lines, 297 U. S. 626, 628 , 56 S. Ct. 624 , 80 L. Ed. 928 [980]; but this does not destroy the claim that the maintenance of the highway is a public and governmental function. The state or the city may exact a tuition charge for instruction in the public schools; but thereby the maintenance of the public schools does not cease to be a function of the government. The state exacts a fee for issuing a license or granting a permit; for recording a deed; for rendering a variety of services in the judicial department. Do these various services thereby lose their character as governmental functions? The federal Post Office Department charges for its services; but no one would question the fact that its operation calls into exercise a governmental function.””

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corp. v. Public Utility District No. 2 of Grant County, Washington · Port of New York Authority v. Hackensack Water Co.

2. ““The phrase ‘governmental functions,’ as it here is used, has been qualified by this court in a variety of ways. Thus, in South Carolina v. United States, 199 U. S. 437, 461 , 26 S. Ct. 110 , 60 L. Ed. 261 , 268, 4 Ann. Cas. 737, it was suggested that the exemption of state agencies and instrumentalities from federal taxation was limited to those which were of a strictly governmental character, and did not extend to those used by the state in carrying on an ordinary private business. In Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., 220 U. S. 107, 172 , 31 S. Ct. 342 , 65 L. Ed. 389 , [421], Ann. Cas. 1912B, 1312, the immunity from taxation was related to the essential governmental functions of the state. In Helvering v . Powers, 293 U. S. 214, 226 , 65 S. Ct. 171 , 79 L. Ed. 291, 295 , we said that the state ‘cannot withdraw sources of revenue from the federal taxing power by engaging in businesses which constitute a departure from usual governmental functions and to which, by reason of their nature, the federal taxing power would normally extend.’ And immunity is not established because the state has the power to engage in the business for what the state conceives to be the public benefit. Id. In United States v. California, 297 U. S. 175, 185 , 66 S. Ct. 421 , 80 L. Ed. 567, 573 , the suggested limit of the federal taxing power was in respect of activities in which the states have traditionally engaged. “In the present case, upon the one side, stress is put upon the adjective ‘essential,’ as u”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority · Van Cott v. State Tax Commission

3. ““We are, of course, quite able to say that certain functions exercised by a city are clearly governmental— that is, lie upon the nearer side of the line — while others are just as clearly private or corporate in character, and lie upon the farther side. But between these two opposite classes, there is a zone of debatable ground within which the cases must be put upon one side or the other of the line by what this court has called the gradual process of historical and judicial ‘inclusion and exclusion.’ (numerous citations) * * “We think, therefore, that it will be wise to confine, as strictly as possible, the present inquiry to the necessities of the immediate issue here involved, and not, by an attempt to formulate any general test, risk embarrassing the decision of cases in respect of municipal activities of a different kind which may arise in the future.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corp. v. Public Utility District No. 2 of Grant County, Washington · Taylor v. City of Devils Lake