Graves v. People of State of New York O'Keefe’s Empirical Analysis
306 U.S. 466 · 1939
Citation profile
189 federal appellate · 43 district · 246 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 815 later decisions (160 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York (1978), Baker v. Carr (1962)
189 federal appellate · 43 district · 246 state decisions — followed in 39 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.
Relationships
Relies on M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Simpson v. Shepard · Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co. · James v. Dravo Contracting Co. · SC Hwy. Dept. v. Barnwell Bros.
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 815 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he federal government is one of delegated powers in the exercise of which Congress is supreme; so that every agency which Congress can constitutionally create is a governmental agency. And since the power to create the agency includes the implied power to do whatever is needful or appropriate, if not expressly prohibited, to protect the agency, there has been attributed to Congress some scope, the limits of which it is not now necessary to define, for granting or withholding immunity of federal agencies from state taxation. * * *”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“but the normal incident of the organization within the same territory of two governments, each possessing the taxing power,”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Assuming, as we do, that the Home Owners' Loan Corporation is clothed with the same immunity from state taxation as the government itself, we cannot say that the present tax on the income of its employees lays any unconstitutional burden upon it. All the reasons for refusing to imply a constitutional prohibition of federal income taxation of salaries of state employees, stated at length in the Gerhardt case, are of equal force when immunity is claimed from state income tax on salaries paid by the national government or its agencies. In this respect we perceive no basis for a difference in result whether the taxed income be salary or some other form of compensation, or whether the taxpayer be an employee or an officer of either a state or the national government, or of its instrumentalities. In no case is there basis for the assumption that any such tangible or certain economic burden is imposed on the government concerned as would justify a court's declaring that the taxpayer is clothed with the implied constitutional tax immunity of the government by which he is employed. [24]”
5 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.