Helvering v. Gerhardt’s Empirical Analysis
304 U.S. 405 · 1938
Citation profile
107 federal appellate · 29 district · 131 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 466 later decisions (85 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably National League of Cities v. Usery (1976), Wickard v. Filburn (1942)
107 federal appellate · 29 district · 131 state decisions — followed in 26 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
reviewedthe decision below (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Eisner v. Macomber · Osborn v. President Directors and Company of the Bank of the United States · Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. · Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad
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 466 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““two guiding principles of limitation for holding the tax immunity of state instrumentalities to its proper function. The one, dependent upon the- nature of the function being performed by the state or in its behalf, excludes from the immunity activities thought not to be essential to the preservation of state governments even though the tax be collected from the state treasury. * * * The other principle, exemplified by those cases where the tax laid upon individuals affects the state only as the burden is passed on to it by the taxpayer, forbids recognition of the immunity when the burden on the state is so speculative and uncertain that if allowed it would restrict the federal taxing power without affording any corresponding tangible protection to the state government; even though the function be thought important enough to de mand immunity from a tax upon the state itself, it is not necessarily protected from a tax which well may be substantially or entirely absorbed by private persons.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“are but normal incidents of the organization within the same territory of two governments.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““[I]f every federal tax which is laid on some new form of state activity, or whose economic burden reaches in some measure the state or those who serve it, were to be set aside as an infringement of state sovereignty, it is evident that a restriction upon national power, devised only as a shield to protect the states from curtailment of the essential operations of government which they have exercised from the beginning, would become a ready means for striking down the taxing power of the nation.””
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.