Henry Billings Brown

“ It is conceded in the opinion of the court that the bequest upon which it is sought to levy the United States inheritance tax was made to a municipal corporation for a public, that is, a governmental, purpose. This being the admitted premise, I cannot give my assent to the proposition that the tax can be imposed. Nothing is better settled than that the United States has no power to tax the governmental attributes of the states, and that municipal corporations are agencies of the states, and not subject, as to their public rights and duties, to direct or indirect taxation by the United States. ”

“ To my mind, no doctrine more dangerous and more subversive of a long line of settled authority in this court could be announced than the statement that, although there is no power whatever to tax a particular object, the courts will nevertheless maintain a tax if it only indirectly puts a burden on the forbidden object, or that the tax may be sustained because, in the judgment of a court, the degree in which the Constitution has been violated is not great. ”

“ The United States not possessing, as the states do, the right to regulate successions, when the United States calls into play its taxing power over the subject of the passage or receipt of property by death, the extent of its authority is to be measured solely by the scope of the taxing power conferred by the Constitution. ”