New Orleans Water-Works Co v. Louisiana Sugar Refining Co’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

35 federal appellate · 19 district · 67 state decisions

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 318 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “In order to come within the provision of the constitution of the United States which declares that no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts, not only must the obligation of a contract have been impaired, but it must have been impaired by a law of the state. The prohibition is aimed at the legislative power of the state, and not at the decisions of its courts, or the acts of administrative or executive boards or officers, or the doings of corporations or individuals.”

   8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Hanford v. Davies · Mercantile Trust & Deposit Co. of Baltimore v. Collins Park & B. R.

2. ““So a by-law or ordinance of a municipal corporation may be such an exercise of legislative power delegated by the Legislature to the corporation as a political subdivision of the state, haying all the force of law within the limits of the municipality, that it may properly be considered as a law, within the meaning ol’ this article of the Constitution of the Unilcd States. “Itor instance, the power of determining what persons and property shall be taxed belongs exclusively to the legislative branch of the government, and, whether exercised by the Legislature itself, or delegated by it to a municipal corporation, is strictly a legislative power. United States v. New Orleans, 98 U. S. 381 , 392, 25 L. Ed. 225 ; Meriwether v. Garrett 102 U. S. 472 , 26 L. Ed. 197 . Accordingly, whore the city council of Charleston, upon which tho Legislature of South Carolina, by the city charter, had conferred the power of taxing persons and property within the city, passed ordinances assessing a tax upon bonds of the city, and thus diminishing the amount of interest which it had agreed to pay, this court held such ordinances to be laws impairing tho. obligation of contracts, for the reason that the city charter gave limited legislative power to the city council, and, when the ordinances were passed under the supposed authority of tho legislative act, their provisions became the law of the state. Murray v. Charleston, 96 U. S. 432 , 440, 24 L. Ed. 760 . See, also, Home Ins. Co. v. City Council”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Risley v. City of Utica · Risley v. City of Utica

3. ““As later decisions have shown, it is not strictly and literally true, that a law of a state, in order to come within the constitutional prohibition, must be either in the form of a statute enacted by the legislature in the ordinary course of legislation, or in the form of a constitution established by the people of the state as their fundamental law. “In Williams v. Bruffy, 96 U. S. 176, 183 ( 24 L. Ed. 716 ), it was said by Mr. Justice Field, delivering judgment, ‘Any enactment, from whatever source originating, to which a state gives the force of law, is a statute of the state, within the meaning of the clause cited relating to the jurisdiction of this court’; (Rev. Stat. § 709); and it was therefore held that a statute of the so-called Confederate States, if enforced by one of the States as its law, was within the prohibition of the constitution. “So a by-law or ordinance of a municipal corporation may be such an exercise of legislative power delegated by the legislature to the corporation as a political subdivision of the State, having all the force of law within the limits of the municipality, that it may properly be considered as a law, within the meaning of this article of the Constitution of the United States.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. City of Kansas City v. Jordan · City of Portland v. State Bank