Brown v. Gerald’s Empirical Analysis
1905
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 40 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 42 later decisions — most recently March 2004 · most notably State ex rel. M. O. Danciger & Co. v. Public Service Commission (1918), Kelo v. City of New London (2004)
2 federal appellate · 40 state decisions — followed in 19 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Munn v. Illinois · Fallbrook Irrigation Dist v. Bradley · Budd v. People of State of New York · Kaukauna Water Power Co. v. Green Bay & Mississippi Canal Co. · Lowell v. City of Boston
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 42 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ ‘Property is devoted to a public use when, and only when, the use is one which the public in its organized capacity, to wit, the state, has a right to create and maintain, and therefore one which all the public has a right to demand and share in.’ . . . In a broad sense it is the right in the public to an actual use, and not to an incidental benefit. If it be a railroad company, the public have a right to be transported, and to have their goods carried from place to place, upon payment of reasonable tolls. The company must accommodate them, whether it will or no. If it be a canal or turnpike or bridge, all may travel thereon. If it be a boom company, all who have logs in the river are entitled of right to have the booms used for them. . . . These are the more ordinary kinds of quasi oublic corporations, and they illustrate better perhaps than any definition can express the particular personal quality of the use which the public as individuals have by right in the property of such corporations. It is the right of the public as individuals to use, when occasion arises. The use must be for the general public, or some portion of it, and not a use by or for particular individuals.” (Page 372.)”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The term ‘public use’ is difficult of exact definition, and most courts have avoided giving one. Public benefit is, however, one of the essential characteristics of a public use. There is no doubt that the conception of public benefit and public utility, and the general welfare of the state, even indirectly promoted, has had much to do in tempering the opinions of the courts. The term is a flexible one, and necessarily has been of constant growth, as new public uses have developed.” (Emphasis ours)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage““That only can be considered * * * [a public use] where the government is supplying its own needs, or is furnishing facilities for its citizens in regard to those matters of public necessity, convenience, 'or welfare which, on account of their peculiar character and the difficulty, perhaps, impossibility, of making provision for them otherwise, is alike proper, useful, and needful for the government to provide.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.