Powell v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Empirical Analysis
127 U.S. 678 · 1888
Citation profile
37 federal appellate · 43 district · 343 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 631 later decisions (85 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2012 · most notably Shapiro v. Thompson (1969), Meyer v. State of Nebraska (1923)
37 federal appellate · 43 district · 343 state decisions — followed in 43 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 Yick Wo v. Hopkins · Mugler v. State of Kansas State of Kansas Tufts · Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward · Barbier v. Connolly · Ex parte Virginia
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 631 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is scarcely necessary to say that if this statute is a legitimate exercise of the police power of the state for the protection of the health of the people, and for the prevention of fraud, it is not inconsistent with that [fourteenth] amendment; for it is the settled doctrine of this court that, as government is organized for the purpose, among others, of preserving the public health and the public morals, it cannot divest itself of the power to provide for those objects; and that the fourteenth amendment was not designed to interfere with the exercise of that power by the states. . . . “Whether the manufacture of oleomargarine, or imitation butter, of the kind described in the statute, is, or may be, conducted in such a way, or with such skill and secrecy, as to baffle ordinary inspection, or whether it involves such danger to the public health as to require, for the protection of the people, the entire suppression of the business, rather than its regulation in such manner as to permit the manufacture and sale of articles of that class that do not contain noxious ingredients, are questions of fact and of public policy which belong to the legislative department to determine. . . .” (pp. 683, 685.)”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage“The power which the states have of prohibiting such use by individuals of their property, as will be prejudicial to the health, the morals, or the safety of the public, is not-and, consistently with the existence and safety of organized society, cannot be-burdened with the condition that the state must compensate such individual owners for pecuniary losses they may sustain, by reason of their not being permitted, by a noxious use of their property, to inflict injury upon the community. The exercise of the police power by the destruction of property which is itself a public nuisance, or the prohibition of its use in a particular way, whereby its value becomes depreciated, is very different from taking property for public use, or from depriving a person of his property without due process of law. In the one case, a nuisance only is abated; in the other, unoffending property is taken away from an innocent owner.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Every possible presumption * * * is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt.” -”
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.