Today in Supreme Court History: February 14, 1845

2/14/1845: Justice Samuel Nelson takes judicial oath.

Justice Samuel Nelson

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Reynolds v. Atlantic Coast Line R.R. Co., 336 U.S. 207 (decided February 14, 1949): failure to clear sugar cane plants from railbed (this was Alabama) which required brakeman to cross from caboose to seventh instead of to usual sixth car to give signal was not proximate cause of his falling to his death while crossing from sixth to seventh car

Dobson v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, 321 U.S. 231 (decided February 14, 1944): “Not every gain growing out of a transaction concerning capital assets is allowed the benefits of the capital gains tax provision”. The Court is (or was) aware that people who live off of buying and selling stocks pay a lower tax rate than those of us who work for a living, and tends to construe capital gains narrowly. Here, income was from settlement of a dispute over a stock sale, not from sale of stock itself.

Maty v. Grasselli Chemical Co., 303 U.S. 197 (decided February 14, 1938): applying state law (New Jersey) as to statute of limitations in a diversity action, holds that allegations of another job under same employer wherein was exposed to chemicals are not time-barred even though added after statute has run

Hollingsworth v. Virginia, 3 U.S. 378 (decided February 14, 1798): Eleventh Amendment was valid despite not having been formally presented to the President (obvious to us now, but this was the first time the amendment process was used) and was retroactive (plaintiff, seeking repayment from Virginia, had handed off to an out-of-state plaintiff because Chisholm v. Georgia had made it clear that a state could be sued in federal court by an out-of-state individual but not by an in-state) (Chisholm, of course, had then been abrogated by the Eleventh Amendment)

South Carolina State Highway Dept. v. Barnwell Bros., 303 U.S. 177 (decided February 14, 1938): state restriction on weight of trucks (20,000 lbs.) and width (90 inches) does not unfairly burden interstate commerce, and Congress has not preempted the field

[F.D. Wolf]

The facts in Dobson, in brief, were the taxpayer in 1929 had bought 300 shares of stick in the National City Bank of New York. In 1930, he sold 100 shares, on which he took a $41,000 loss, which he was allowed to deduct as a capital loss. In 1931, he sold another 100 shares, taking a $28,000 deduction as a capital loss. In 1936, he became aware of facts that his original purchase had been induced by fraud and sued the seller. The suit settled for $45,000. By now, it was too late to amend his prior tax returns. The Court held that was ordinary income, not capital income, for the new tax year. So, the Court essentially holds what was, in fact, a $24,000 loss is transformed, by law, into a $45,000 gain. That seems grossly unfair to me, but as the Court essentially said, principles of equity have no place in tax law.

[Dan Schiavetta]

thanks

[Magister]

He already had the benefit of a capital loss in earlier tax years, so it would be dishonest to apply the loss a second time to reduce his taxes. It might be unfair to consider the settlement as regular income rather than capital gains, which thus incurs greater tax liability, but converting everything to capital gains is probably more unfair to those who don't get to benefit from that lower tax rate.

[bernard11]

Were the losses and the recovery treated similarly for tax purposes?

That is, were the losses deducted from ordinary income, and the recovery taxed the same way?

[SMP0328]

Hollingsworth v. Virginia, 3 U.S. 378 (decided February 14, 1798): Eleventh Amendment was valid despite not having been formally presented to the President (obvious to us now, but this was the first time the amendment process was used) and was retroactive (plaintiff, seeking repayment from Virginia, had handed off to an out-of-state plaintiff because Chisholm v. Georgia had made it clear that a state could be sued in federal court by an out-of-state individual but not by an in-state) (Chisholm, of course, had then been abrogated by the Eleventh Amendment)

It was the second time. The Bill of Rights was the first time Article V was used.

[Dan Schiavetta]

You're right. Thanks!

[Jerry B.]

Just want to note that Justice Nelson has quite a neckbeard.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Thanks to George Santos for

providing plenty of laughs on Saturday Night Live;

making Mike Johnson's job even more difficult (while Johnson still has it);

demonstrating that there is room in the Republican Party's big tent for a habitually lying, perpetually grifting, election-denying, heavily indicted drag queen; and

for demonstrating that Elise Stefanik's endorsement is worth about as much as Eugene Volokh's endorsement is worth.

[Commenter_XY]

I want to note for the historical record.

Secretary Alejandro Mayokas was impeached by the House of Representatives. Mayorkas is the second cabinet member to be impeached in US history.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

I also suspect he'll be the second to be acquitted, and he won't even have to resign like Belknap did.

[Brett Bellmore]

Certainly. Which kind of underscores that what's going on at the border isn't incompetence. If it were, Democrats would be as upset about it as Republicans.

It's what Mayokas was hired to do.

[David Nieporent]

Why should Democrats be upset about it? Why should any Americans?

[Sarcastr0]

You don’t want an immigration bill because the Dems exist and will sabotage it unless it has zero compromise, flexibility, or discretion in it.
Which is both politically impossible and unimplementable if passed.
But at this point Great Replacement is a part of your identity, and if it's something you can carp about for the rest of your days, well that seems fine with you.

We can all see who is at fault when it comes to our immigration policy, and it’s not the head of DHS.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't want an immigration bill because a failure to enforce existing law can't be fixed by enacting a new law, and because the new law actually legitimized much of the failure to enforce.

Until it's established that the administration is going to actually enforce the law, there's no point in negotiating new laws for them to not enforce.

[Mr. Bumble]

The bath tub is overflowing and SarcastrO is looking for buckets to spread the water around rather than shutting off the water.

[Jason Cavanaugh]

Odd that your hero Ted Cruz said - when Democrats controlled Congress, that it was Congress who must act to fix the border.

Now that there isn't a Republican President, he says it's up to the President to fix the issue.

You're both politically-motivated liars.

[Sarcastr0]

As has been explained to you by me and plenty of other actual attorneys, Brett, you're profoundly ignorant about the law, and you are determined to stay that way.

Better to feel right, than be right!

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

That conservatives would wish to direct attention to this impotent, bigoted flailing is inexplicable.

But they didn't get to be today's Republicans with sound judgment, adequate education, and a strong understanding of modern America.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Unfortunately, the justice was split in two in a railroad accident, hence the term "half-Nelson."

[bernard11]

Wait, Azilia. Are you sure you really have a hold on this?

[Commenter_XY]

Better to be half-baked, as opposed to half-Nelson. 🙂

[Dan Schiavetta]

No doubt the free market would have reduced workplace deaths even further. /s

[Dr. Ed 2]

They didn't have hand held radios back in the 1920s.

[Frank Drackman]

Queenie's Mammy knows all about Trains

[John F. Carr]

The 1920s was in the first half of the transition to workman's compensation insurance. The cost-benefit calculation of workplace safety would change as the costs became more visible. "Mortimer, our premiums are up $30,000 this year. Can we do anything to reduce pickle slicer related injuries?"

[Krayt]

Compare vs. workplace deaths in non-free market places, or deaths in general in dogged, corrupt, dictatorships.

It’s a cheesy thing to poke at it as if a cause of deaths rather than the solution to much worse. This does not mean there cannot be improvements, but recognize you are nattering about the rough edges.

You cannot die in car accidents, fall off skyscrapers, and so on, unless they exist or are being built.

[defaultdotxbe]

Didn't railroad unions fight against market-driven automations and technological advancements on the grounds that it would cause brakemen to lose their (very dangerous) jobs?

[David Nieporent]

Well, the workplace death rate was plummeting long before laws like OSHA were passed. To be fair, most of that likely had to do with the changing nature of employment; it's a lot harder to die photocopying documents than working in a steel mill.

[SRG2]

FWIW I had an arch-libertarian friend in England who opposed all health and safety regulations and who said that before someone joined an employer, they should research the employer's safety record and check into how the place operates before deciding to work there and that employers, not wishing to deter employees, would of course make such information available. She was not wise in the ways of the world.

[Brett Bellmore]

I think it would be fair to say that life has improved on many metrics, gotten worse on some.

The question is, were all the losses necessary to achieve the gains, or were some of them just losses, not tradeoffs?

[Dan Schiavetta]

The air and water got cleaner only after the government stepped in. I’m old enough to remember the “Cuyahoga River catching fire” days.

Also we will need government regulation to arrest global warming. The free market obviously won’t deal with it (or else they would have dealt with it by now).

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Yes, only government can stop what doesn't exist. The hubris of statists is amazing.

[Krayt]

Historically, rivers caught fire all the time, when pollution was much worse. The reason that was a big deal was because it didn’t happen much anymore. It wasn’t a shocking incident warning of pollution going in the wrong direction, it was the last gasp of a century of industrial unrestricted pollution being cleaned up.

[F.D. Wolf]

Free markets don't work perfectly, but they tend to work better than government planners. This would be true even if the planners were geniuses, though in reality they tend to be idiots. In 1894, the London Times predicted that in 50 years all the streets in London would be buried in nine feet of horse manure. How could it be otherwise? More people would naturally require more horses which naturally produce more manure. To address this crisis, New York Mayor Geroge Waring, in 1898, organized the first international congress on urban planning. The conference was scheduled to last ten days, but no one had any ideas, so it adjourned after three. Ultimately, Henry Ford solved the problem.

Central planning was one of the organizing principles of the Soviet Union. Intellectuals embraced this new "scientific" approach to economics, so much more orderly than those messy free markets. The results were famine and misery.

[Michael Resanovic (still highly opinionated)]

+1 for spelling Cuyahoga correctly

[SRG2]

Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf will tell you that it never happened. Or he might claim that this pollution only occurred due to statists. Or some equally ignorant proposition.

[Krychek_2]

Free markets "tend to work better" for whom?

Back in the days when ten year olds were chained to factory benches for 12 hour days and paid next to nothing, that worked just great if you were the factory owner. Not so much if you were the ten year old.

Back in the days when companies paid their employees in scrip redeemable at the company store, that worked great if you were the company. Not so much for the employees.

Back in the days when the government did not impose health and safety requirements on landlords, that was great for the landlords. Not so much if you were a tenant whose child died of cholera.

And the point that I really wish libertarians would acknowledge is that their system works great if you are at the top of the heap. Not so much for those on the bottom.

[bernard11]

Free markets don’t work perfectly, but they tend to work better than government planners.

Depends what you mean by "government planners."

If you are talking about deciding what sorts of everyday goods should be produced, then yes. But the free market doesn't give a crap about externalities, or monopolies, or worker safety, or lots of other things.

It does a bad job of producing public goods, and managing the so-called "commons."

Market advocates would do well to emphasize the market's benefits and not go wild about how it's always the best approach.

[Brett Bellmore]

Factory work was so awful that... people were moving from the farms to the city to get it. Why?

Because farm work was worse.

Life in general was pretty awful at the time. Awful enough for factory work to be a step up.

What improved life was actually the increasing wealth generated by the industrial revolution; Safety and comfort are luxury goods, only wealthy societies invest in them.

[Krychek_2]

Brett, trust you to come up with the argument that it could have been worse so somehow that excuses it.

Increasing wealth does improve life, and having the government put outer limits on how horribly employers and landlords can treat those under them improves it even more. It's not an either/or. It's a matter of both being good things.

Besides which, I have zero doubt that if employment and housing regulations went away, it would only be a matter of time (and probably not much time) before things reverted back to where they were. We already see the beginnings of it; as GOP administrations have weakened protections, employers and landlords have taken advantage.

In 1932 a coal miner told a reporter that he was voting for FDR because "Mr. Roosevelt is the only candidate who understands that my employer is a son of a bitch." Nothing much has changed.

[Brett Bellmore]

Who said anything about "excuses"?

I'm pointing out that at the time life sucked, PERIOD. It's easy to forget, when somebody points out that factory work really sucked, that the alternatives ALSO sucked.

Life got better as we got wealthier. It began getting better as we got wealthier before the environmental and safety regulations started up.

In fact, the environmental and safety regulations were not cause, they were effect. The government got into the act only after things had already started improving.

[Sarcastr0]

Life got better as we got wealthier. It began getting better as we got wealthier before the environmental and safety regulations started up.

What a collectivist argument - look at the masses, says Brett - they're doing better, so who cares about workplace deaths or a poisoned town or two?

I would also note the importance of unions and labor laws in making sure productivity is not a race to the bottom. Of course Brett may see child labor as the key to incredible prosperity...

[Brett Bellmore]

Is putting words in other peoples' mouths that they didn't utter a spinal reflex for you, Sarcastr0?

[Nige]

'It began getting better as we got wealthier before the environmental and safety regulations started up.'

No, it just brought about new and exciting ways to be horribly exploited.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, your argument is absolutely that individual deaths and pollution don't matter because of general prosperity. I'm sorry if the obvious implications of your argument trouble you, but you should take it up with your own worldview.

The child labor thing is just speculation, but does seem implied by how much your fasten on family prosperity over everything else.

[Commenter_XY]

I shake my head at that, too.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Do you get a plus or a minus for referencing the pickle-slicer joke?

[David Nieporent]

I believe he was referring to global warming when he said "doesn't exist," not the river fires. Though Prof. Adler has debunked the river fire thing many times here. (Not that they didn't happen, of course. But they were on their way out before the environmental laws.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

I had to look that up. Ha!

[Nige]

As opposed to whatever you two are, if you pretend it isn't real, it'll go away.

[bernard11]

Why?