Edward Douglass White

“ With the motives of public policy which may induce a state to prefer near relatives by affinity to collateral relatives, we are not concerned, since the 14th Amendment does not deprive a state of the power to regulate and burden the right to inherit, but at the most can only be held to restrain such an exercise of power as would exclude the conception of judgment and discretion, and which would be so obviously arbitrary and unreasonable as to be beyond the pale of governmental authority. ”

“ The asserted repugnancy of the statute to the Constitution of the United States, as elaborately argued at bar, rests upon the proposition that the statute denied to brothers and sisters of a decedent the equal protection of the laws, because the statute embraced an inheritance, bequest, or devise in favor of a brother or sister, and did not include bequests or devises in favor of a wife or widow of a son or the husband of a daughter of the decedent. ”

“ We do not stop to refer in detail to the many forms of argument by which the contention is sought to be sustained, but content ourselves with stating that, whatever be the form in which the propositions relied on are advanced, they all reduce themselves to and must depend upon the soundness of the contention that the 14th Amendment compels the states, in levying inheritance taxes, and, a fortiori, in regulating inheritances, to conform to blood relationship. ”