Case of the State Tax on Foreign-Held Bonds. Railroad Company v. Pennsylvania’s Empirical Analysis
82 U.S. 300 · 1873
Citation profile
30 federal appellate · 19 district · 146 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 369 later decisions (61 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2013 · most notably Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell (1934), Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. (1911)
30 federal appellate · 19 district · 146 state decisions — followed in 35 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 Ohio and Mississippi Railroad Company v. Wheeler · City of Davenport v. Mississippi & Missouri Railroad · Faxton v. McCosh
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 369 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““But debts owing by corporations, like debts owing by individuals, are not property of the debtors in any sense. They are obligations of tHe debtors, and only possess value in the hands of the creditors. With them they are nroperty, and in their hands they may be taxed. To call debts property of tlio debtors is simply to misuse terms. All the property there can be, in the nature of things, in debts of corporations, belongs to the creditors, to whom they are payable, and follows their domicile, wherever that may be. Their debts can have no locality separate from the parties to whom they are due. * * ⅜ It is undoubtedly true that the actual situs of personal property which has a visible and tangible existence, and not the domicile of its owner, will, in many cases, determine the state in which it may be .taxed. The same thing is true of irablic securities consisting of state bonds and bonds of municipal .bodies, and circulating notes of banking institutions. The former, by general usage, have acquired the character of, and are treated as, property in the place where they are found, though removed from the domicile of the owner. The latter are treated and pass as money wherever they are. But other personal property, consisting of bonds, mortgages, and debts generally, has no situs independent of the domicile of the owner, and certainly can have none where the instruments, as in the present case, constituting the evidences of debt, are not separated from the possession of the own”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(u)nless restrained by provisions of the federal Constitution, the power of the state as to the mode, form, and extent of taxation is unlimited, where the subjects to which it applies are within her jurisdiction.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is true that the situs of the property mortgaged is within the jurisdiction of the State, but the mortgage itself, being personal property, a chose in action, attaches to the person of the owner.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Walker v. People
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.