Phillips v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

After I. L. Phillips died, his estate (plaintiffs/executors) unsuccessfully challenged the Commissioner's (defendant) back-tax assessment before the Board of Tax Appeals, which then entitled the government under a since-repealed 1926 law to summarily collect the taxes without a prior judicial hearing on the assessment's correctness. The estate sued to block the summary collection, arguing the lack of any pre-collection judicial hearing violated Fifth Amendment due process; the Second Circuit ruled for the Commissioner, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a lower-court split.