Harrison v. Schaffner’s Empirical Analysis
312 U.S. 579 · 1941
Citation profile
443 federal appellate · 19 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 842 later decisions (31 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2002 · most notably Commissioner v. Sunnen (1948), Commissioner v. Tower (1946)
443 federal appellate · 19 district · 6 state decisions
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
reviewedSchaffner v. Harrison (from Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Hormel v. Helvering · Helvering v. Clifford · Helvering v. Horst · Lucas v. Earl · Corliss v. Bowers
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 842 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * Decision in these cases was rested on the principle that the power to dispose of income is the equivalent of ownership of it and that the exercise of the power to procure its payment to another* whether to pay a debt or to make a gift, is within the reach of the statute taxing income ‘derived from any source whatever’. In the light of our opinions in these cases the narrow question presented by this record is whether it makes any difference in the application of the taxing statute that the gift is accomplished by the anticipatory assignment of trust income rather than of interest, dividends, rents and the like which are payable to the donor.””
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“And it was also noted that `Even though the gift of income be in form accomplished by the temporary disposition of the donor's property which produces the income, the donor retaining every other substantial interest in it, we have not allowed the form to obscure the reality.'”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * It is enough that we find in the present case that the taxpayer, in point of substance, has parted with no substantial interest in property other than the specified payments of income which, like other gifts of income, are taxable to the donor. Unless in the meantime the difficulty be resolved by statute or treasury regulation, we leave it to future judicial decisions to determine precisely where the line shall be drawn between gifts of income-producing property and gifts of income from property of which the donor remains the owner, for all substantial and practical purposes.””
6 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.