Philadelphia Southern Mail Co v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
3 district · 85 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 116 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2019 · most notably Galveston Harrisburg San Antonio Railway Company v. State of Texas (1908), Burnet v. Coronado Oil & Gas Co. (1932)
3 district · 85 state decisions — followed in 30 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 · Brown v. Maryland · Coe v. Town of Errol · Robbins v. Taxing District of Shelby Co Tennessee · Aaron Cooley v. The Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia to the Use of the Society for the Relief of Distressed Pilots Their Widows and Children Same
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 116 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The second ground on which the decision referred to was based was, that the tax was upon the franchise, of the corporation granted to it by the state. We do not think that this can be affirmed in the present case. It certainly could not have been intended as a tax on the corporate franchise, because, by the terms of the act, it was laid equally on the corporations of other states doing business in Pennsylvania.” ( 122 U. S. 342 .)”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“a regulation of the commerce, a restriction upon it, a burden upon it. Clearly this could not be done by the state without interfering with the power of Congress.”
1 later decision 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.