E. Norman Peterson Marital Trust, Chemical Bank, Trustee v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge:

Language does not have a “plain meaning” outside of its particular context. “You should have passed, dummy,” means something entirely different at a bridge table from what it means on Superbowl Sunday. The same words signify very different things because the linguistic context has changed. In this case, the taxpayer has asked us to invalidate a Treasury regulation that defines the word “added” in a way that is consistent with half a century of tax law. The taxpayer asserts that the plain meaning of the word cannot support the definition given to it in the Treasury’s…