Opinion of the Court.

539 U.S.

other factors which induces a bondholder to act and determines his tax in given years. These factors may combine in a specife case to produce an effect upon revenue which to some may appear too drastic for Congress to have intended. But there is nothing in this record to indicate that Congress or the Treasury anticipated that the total long-run effect of $113 and 125 on the yield from both taxables and tax-exempts would be to decrease federal revenue. And even if Congress had expected that some loss of revenue would be entailed. it might have decided that more equal treatment of taxpayers was more important than possible revenue loss; it cannot be argued that Congress lacked the legislative discretion to have reached such a conclusion. If in practice these sections are causing such loss of revenue as to indicate that Congress may have erred in its balancing of the competing considerations involved, the amendment must obviously be enacted by the Congress and not the Commissioner of Internal Revenue or this Court.

The legislative history fails to intimate that Congress intended to confine the deduction to bonds the premium on which was paid for a higher-than-market interest rate. At most, petitioner's presentation of the legislative materials suggests that Congress may have had the bondholder who was seeking a higher interest rate primarily in mind; but it does not establish that Congress in fact legislated with reference to him exclusively. Congress,

*In this case, the record does not disclose how petitioner disposed of the bonds. If for some reason he had sold them after six months at a price above 138, his capital gain would have exceeded the deduction he took on the bond premium. This possibility is not merely theoretical, for the bonds in fact stood above 138 for over a year, starting in August, 1945.

* Petitioner cites H. R. Rep. No. 2333, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 47 (1942), and the statements of John O'Brien, 1 Hearings before Senate Committee on Finance on H. R. 7378, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 52 (1942),

619

Opinion of the Court.

and the Treasury in advising Congress, may well have concluded that the best manner of affording him relief and correcting the inequitable treatment of bondholders whose interest receipts were taxable, was to define the scope of the amendment by reference to types of bonds rather than causes of premium payment.

As "bond premium" is used by accountants and other writers in the securities field, it is any payment in addition to face value.10 There is no suggestion that the words have only a limited significance, echoing petitioner's "true" premium, applicable solely to that extra price caused by the desire to obtain a higher than average interest yield. On the contrary, some authors have noted the variety of causes which induce the payment of bond premium, and the practical impossibility of disentangling and isolating them for the purpose of relative evaluation, as would be required if petitioner's reading of the statute were upheld." We adopt the view that "bond premium" in § 125 means any extra payment, regardless of the reason therefor, in accordance with the firmly established and Randolph Paul, 1 Hearings before House Committee on Ways and Means on Revenue Revision of 1942, 77th Cong., 2d Sess. 90 (1942). None of these can be taken as a clear statement excluding premium reflecting financial inducements other than the interest rate.

10 E. g., "When bonds sell at a price greater than par, they are said to sell at a premium . . . ." Financial Handbook 1210 (3d ed. 1948); ". . . bond premium-the amount by which issue price, or cost at later date, exceeds maturity value . . . ." Paton, Advanced Accounting 197 (1941); Grossman, Investment Principles and Practice 14. (1939); Noble, Accounting Principles 447 (4th ed. 1945). And see Old Colony R. Co. v. Commissioner, 284 U. S. 552, 555 (1932); New York Life Ins. Co. v. Edwards, 271 U. S. 109, 116 (1926); 4 Bogert, Trusts and Trustees, § 831 (1935); 2 Scott on Trusts § 239.2 (1939). 11 See, e. g., 1 Dewing, Financial Policy of Corporations 662 (4th ed. 1941); Saliers and Holmes, Basic Accounting Principles 509 (1937); 4 (pt. 1) Bogert, Trusts and Trustees 319 (1935); 2 Scott on Trusts 1337 (1939); Williams, Are Convertibles Now Attractive? 83 Mag. of Wall St. 134 (1948).

Opinion of the Court.

339 U.S.

principle of tax law that the ordinary meaning of terms is persuasive of their statutory meaning.12

We conclude that Congress made no distinctions based upon the inducements for paying the premium. Congress delimited the bond premium it wished to make amortizable in terms of categories of bonds, and there is no doubt that respondent purchased bonds which are included within the purview of § 125. Respondent is therefore entitled to this deduction and the judgment below is Affirmed.

MR. JUSTICE BLACK dissents. He believes that this case should be decided in accordance with, and for the reasons given by, the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Commissioner v. Shoong, 177 F. 2d 131 (1949).

MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS and MR. JUSTICE JACKSON took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

12 Crane v. Commissioner, 331 U. S. 1, 6-7 (1947); Helvering v. Flaccus Oak Leather Co., 313 U. S. 247, 249 (1941); Helvering v. San Joaquin Fruit & Investment Co., 297 U. S. 496, 499 (1936); Lang v. Commissioner, 289 U. S. 109, 111 (1933); cf. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Phillips, 332 U. S. 168, 171 (1947).

Syllabus.

SWEATT v. PAINTER ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS.

No. 44. Argued April 4, 1950.--Decided June 5, 1950.

Petitioner was denied admission to the state-supported University of Texas Law School, solely because he is a Negro and state law forbids the admission of Negroes to that Law School. He was offered, but he refused, enrollment in a separate law school newly established by the State for Negroes. The University of Texas Law School has 16 full-time and three part-time professors, 850 students, a library of 65,000 volumes, a law review, moot court facilities, scholarship funds, an Order of the Coif affiliation, many distinguished alumni, and much tradition and prestige. The separate law school for Negroes has five full-time professors, 23 students, a library of 16,500 volumes, a practice court, a legal aid association and one alumnus admitted to the Texas Bar; but it excludes from its student body members of racial groups which number 85% of the population of the State and which include most of the lawyers, witnesses, jurors, judges, and other officials with whom petitioner would deal as a member of the Texas Bar. Held: The legal education offered petitioner is not substantially equal to that which he would receive if admitted to the University of Texas Law School; and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires that he be admitted to the University of Texas Law School. Pp. 631–636. Reversed.

A Texas trial court found that a newly-established state law school for Negroes offered petitioner "privileges, advantages, and opportunities for the study of law substantially equivalent to those offered by the State to white students at the University of Texas" and denied mandamus to compel his admission to the University of Texas Law School. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed. 210 S. W. 2d 442. The Texas Supreme Court denied writ of error. This Court granted certiorari. 338 U. S. 865. Reversed, p. 636.

W. J. Durham and Thurgood Marshall argued the cause for petitioner. With them on the brief were Robert L. Carter, William R. Ming, Jr., James M. Nabrit and Franklin H. Williams.

Price Daniel, Attorney General of Texas, and Joe R. Greenhill, First Assistant Attorney General, argued the cause for respondents. With them on the brief was E. Jacobson, Assistant Attorney General.

Briefs of amici curiae, supporting petitioner, were filed by Solicitor General Perlman and Philip Elman for the United States; Paul G. Annes for the American Federation of Teachers; Thomas I. Emerson, Erwin N. Griswold, Robert Hale, Harold Havighurst and Edward Levi for the Committee of Law Teachers Against Segregation in Legal Education; Phineas Indritz for the American Veterans Committee, Inc.; and Marcus Cohn and Jacob Grumet for the American Jewish Committee et al.

An amici curiae brief in support of respondents was filed on behalf of the States of Arkansas, by Ike Murray, Attorney General; Florida, by Richard W. Ervin, Attorney General, and Frank J. Heintz, Assistant Attorney General; Georgia, by Eugene Cook, Attorney General, and M. H. Blackshear, Jr., Assistant Attorney General; Kentucky, by A. E. Funk, Attorney General, and M. B. Holifield, Assistant Attorney General; Louisiana, by Bolivar E. Kemp, Jr., Attorney General; Mississippi, by Greek L. Rice, Attorney General, and George H. Ethridge, Acting Attorney General; North Carolina, by Harry McMullan, Attorney General, and Ralph Moody, Assistant Attorney General; Oklahoma, by Mac Q. Williamson, Attorney General; South Carolina, by John M. Daniel, Attorney General; Tennessee, by Roy H. Beeler, Attorney General, and William F. Barry, Solicitor General; and Virginia, by J. Lindsay Almond, Jr., Attorney General, and Walter E. Rogers, Assistant Attorney General.