168
Opinion of the Court
States v. General Motors Corp., 323 U. S. 373, 377-378 (1945) (property "denote[s] the group of rights inhering in the citizen's relation to the physical thing, as the right to . . . dispose of it"). Similarly, the Texas rules governing the distribution of marital assets have a historical pedigree tracing back to the marital property laws adopted by the Texas Congress only four years after Texas became an independent republic. W. McClanahan, Community Property Law in the United States § 3:23, pp. 123-124 (1982). But petitioners point to no "background principles" of property law, Lucas, supra, at 1030, that would lead one to the conclusion that the owner of a fund temporarily deposited in an attorney trust account may be deprived of the interest the fund generates.
Petitioners further contend that "interest follows principal" is an incomplete explication of the Texas rule. Reply Brief for Petitioners 11. Petitioners explain that interest follows principal in Texas only if the interest is "allowed by law or fixed by the parties." Cavnar v. Quality Control Parking, Inc., 696 S. W. 2d 549, 552 (Tex. 1985). We fail to see how this assists petitioners' cause. We agree that the government has great latitude in regulating the circumstances under which interest may be earned. As we explained in Andrus v. Allard, 444 U. S. 51, 66 (1979), "anticipated gains ha[ve] traditionally been viewed as less compelling than other property-related interests." But petitioners do not argue that the payment of interest on client funds deposited in an attorney trust account is not "allowed by law" in Texas. Rather, they argue that interest actually "earned" by funds held in IOLTA accounts, Texas IOLTA Rule 9, is not the private property of the owner of the principal. However, regardless of whether the owner of the principal has a constitutionally cognizable interest in the anticipated generation of interest by his funds, any interest that does accrue attaches as a property right incident to the ownership of the underlying principal.
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