United States v. Jacobs’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

132 federal appellate · 13 district · 94 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 389 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““ * * * There was — at his death — a distinct shifting of economic. interest, a decided change for the survivor’s benefit. This termination of a joint tenancy marked by a change in the nature of ownership of property was designated by Congress as an appropriate occasion for the imposition of a tax. * * *»”

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Estate of Awtry v. Commissioner · Union Planters National Bank v. United States

2. ““The tax does not operate retroactively merely because some of the facts or conditions upon which its application depends came into being prior to the enactment of the tax.””

   5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Irvine · Bodell v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

3. “Death duties or excises imposed upon the occasion of change in legal relationships to property brought about by death are ancient in origin. Congress has the power' to levy a tax upon the occasion of a joint tenant’s acquiring the status of survivor at the death of a co-tenant. In holding that the full value of an estate by the entirety may constitutionally be included in a decedent’s gross estate for estate tax purposes, this Court said: “The question ... is, not whether there has been, in the strict sense of that word, a ‘transfer’ of the property by the death of the decedent, or a receipt of it by right of succession, but whether the death has brought into being or ripened for the survivor, property rights of such character as to make appropriate the imposition of a tax upon that result (which Congress may call a transfer tax, a death duty or anything else it sees fit), to be measured, in whole or in part, by the value of such rights ... “At ... [the co-tenant's] death, however, and because of it, ... [the survivor] for the first time, became entitled to exclusive possession, use and enjoyment; she ceased to hold the property subject to qualifications imposed by the law relating to tenancy by the entirety, and became entitled to hold and enjoy it absolutely as her own; and then, and then only, she acquired the power, not theretofore possessed, of disposing of the property by an exercise of her sole will. Thus the death of one of the parties to the tenancy became the ‘gener”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Fernandez v. Wiener · Jeschke v. United States