Welch v. Henry’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

244 federal appellate · 41 district · 337 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 954 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In each case it is necessary to consider the nature of the tax and the circumstances in which it is laid before it can be said that its retroactive application is so harsh and oppressive as to transgress the constitutional limitation.”

   55 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States Trust Company of New York v. New Jersey · McKesson Corp. v. Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco, Fla. Dept. of Business Regulation

2. ““The equitable distribution of the costs of government through the medium of an income tax is a delicate and difficult task. In its performance experience has shown the importance of reasonable opportunity for the legislative body, in the revision of tax laws, to distribute increased costs of government among its taxpayers in the light of present need for revenue and with knowledge of the sources and amounts of -the various classes of taxable income during the taxable period preceding revision. Without that opportunity accommodation of the legislative purpose to the need may be seriously obstructed if not defeated. We cannot say that the due process which the Constitution exacts denies that opportunity to legislatures; that it withholds from them, more than in the case of a prospective tax, authority to distribute the increased tax burden in the light of experience and in conformity with accepted notions of the requirements of equal protection; or that in view of well established legislative practice, both state and national taxpayers can justly assert surprise and complain of arbitrary action in the retroactive apportionment of tax burdens to income at the first opportunity after knowledge of the nature and amount of the income is available. And we think that the ‘recent transactions’ to which this Court has declared a tax law may be retroactively applied, Cooper v. United States, 280 U.S. 409 , 411, 50 S.Ct. 164 , 74 L.Ed. 516 , must be taken to include the receipt of incom”

   8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Carlton · Ferman v. United States

3. “As respects income tax statutes it long has been the practice of Congress to make them retroactive for relatively short periods so as to include profits from transactions consummated while the statute was in process of enactment, or within so much of the calendar year as preceded the enactment; and repeated decisions of this Court have recognized this practice and sustained it as consistent with the due process of law clause of the Constitution. Stockdale v. Atlantic Ins. Co. * * *; Brushaber v. Union P. R. Co. * * *; Lynch v. Hornby * * *; Cooper v. United States * * *. [United States v. Hudson, 299 U. S. 498, 500-501 , 57 S. Ct. 309, 310 , 81 L. Ed. 370, 372 (1937)]”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
   e.g. Nabakowski v. Commissioner · Klebanow v. Glaser