Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. Walsh’s Empirical Analysis
139 F.2d 809 · 1943
Citation profile
55 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 138 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2020 · most notably Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. McLaughlin (1944), Spector Motor Service, Inc. v. O'Connor (1951)
55 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 state decisions
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.
Appellate journey
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 41 · 49 U.S.C. § 306
Relies on M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette · Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. · Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. v. Huffman · Wisconsin v. J. C. Penney Co.
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 138 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“to embrace the exhilarating opportunity of anticipating a doctrine which may be in the womb of time, but whose birth is distant.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“It is always embarrassing for a lower court to say whether the time has come to disregard decisions of a higher court, not yet explicitly overruled, because they parallel others in which the higher court has expressed a contrary view ... [T]he measure of its duty is to divine, as best it can, what would be the event of an appeal in the case before it.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“in the face of changes plainly foreshadowed,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.