Kidd v. Pearson’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

79 federal appellate · 77 district · 153 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 610 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““No distinction is more popular to the common mind, or more clearly expressed in economic and political literature, than that between manufactures and commerce. Manufacture is transformation — the fashioning of raw materials into a change of form for use. The functions of commerce are differ•ent. The buying and selling and the transportation incidental thereto constitute- commerce; and the regulation of commerce in the constitutional sense embraces the regulation at least of such transportation. The 'legal definition of the term, as given by this court in County of Mobile v. Kimball, 102 U. S. 691 , 702 [ 26 L. Ed. 238 ] is as follows: ‘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.’ If it be held that the term includes the regulation of all such manufactures as are intended to be the subject of commercial transactions in the future, it' is impossible to deny that it would also include 'all productive industries that contemplate the 'same thing. The result would be that Congress would be invested, to the exclusion of the states, with the power to regulate, not only manufactures, but also agriculture, horticulture, stock raising, domestic fisheries, mining — in short, every branch of human industry. For is there one of them that does not contemplate, more o”

   20 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Leisy v. Hardin · United States v. E. C. Knight Co.

2. “"The subject to which the power is next applied, is ... commerce `among the several States.' The word `among' means intermingled with. A thing which is among others, is intermingled with them. Commerce among the States, cannot stop at the external boundary line of each State, but may be introduced into the interior. "It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce, which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a State, or between different parts of the same State, and which does not extend to or affect other States. Such a power would be inconvenient, and is certainly unnecessary. "Comprehensive as the word `among' is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more States than one. The phrase is not one which would probably have been selected to indicate the completely interior traffic of the State, because it is not an apt phrase for that purpose; and the enumeration of the particular classes of commerce, to which the power was to be extended, would not have been made, had the intention been to extend the power to every description. The enumeration presupposes something not enumerated; and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of the sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of a State. The genius and character of the whole government seem to be, that its action is to be applied to all the external concerns of the nation, and to those internal concerns which affect the States”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Boyer · 824 So. 2d 668 - Selma Medical Center, Inc. v. Fontenot

3. “A situation mqre paralyzing to the state governments, and more provocative of conflicts between the general government and the States, and less likely to have been what the framers of the Constitution intended, it would be difficult to imagine.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Leisy v. Hardin · United Leather Workers' International Union v. Herkert & Meisel Trunk Co.