Gloucester Ferry Co v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Empirical Analysis
114 U.S. 196 · 1885
Citation profile
60 federal appellate · 48 district · 170 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 620 later decisions (122 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2016 · most notably Caminetti v. United States (1917), Southern Pacific Terminal Company v. Interstate Commerce Commission (1911)
60 federal appellate · 48 district · 170 state decisions — followed in 36 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 M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Gibbons v. Ogden · Paul v. Virginia · Welton v. The State of Missouri · County of Mobile v. Kimball
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 620 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““* * * Commerce with foreign countries and among the States, strictly considered, consists in intercourse and traffic, including in these terms navigation and the transportation and transit of persons and property, as well as the purchase, sale, and exchange of commodities.” 102 U.S. at page 702 .”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage““It is contended by tlie plaintiff with much earnestness that the approval of the secretary of war of the plan and location of the bridge was not conclusive as to its character and effect upon the navigation of the river, and that it was still open to him to show that, if constructed as proposed, it would be an obstruction to such navigation, as fully as though such approval ha.d not been had. It is argued that congress could not give any such effect to the action of the secretary, it being Judicial in its character. There is in this position a misapprehension of the purport of the act. By submitting the matter to the secretary congress did not abdicate any of its authority to determine what should or should not be deemed an obstruction to the navigation of the river. It simply declared that, upon a certain fact being established, the bridge should bo deemed a lawful structure, and employed the secretary of war as an agent to ascertain that fact. Haying power to-regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states, and navigation being a branch of that commerce, it has the control of all navigable waters between the states, or connecting with the ocean, so as to preserve and protect their free navigation. Its power, therefore, to determine what shall not be deemed, so far as that commerce is concerned, an obstruction, is necessarily paramount and conclusive. It may in direct terms declare absolutely, or on conditions, that a bridge of a particular height shall ”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Transportation implies the taking up of persons or property at some point and putting them down at another.”); Black’s Law Dictionary 1729 (10th ed. 2014) (defining”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.