Plummer v. Coler’s Empirical Analysis
178 U.S. 115 · 1900
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 11 district · 102 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 278 later decisions (56 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2013 · most notably Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. (1911), Smith v. Kansas City Title & Trust Co. (1921)
35 federal appellate · 11 district · 102 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Brown v. Maryland · Magoun v. Illinois Trust & Savings Bank · Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. · Plowden Weston v. The City Council of Charleston · Home Insurance Co of New York v. State of New York
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 278 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“'when effort is made . . . to establish the unconstitutional character of a particular tax by claiming its remote effect will be to impair the borrowing power of the government, courts . . . ought to have something more substantial to act upon than mere conjecture. The injury ought to be obvious and appreciable.'”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““From these principles it is deduced that the states may tax the privilege, discriminate between relatives and between these and strangers, and grant exemptions, and are not precluded from this power by the provisions of the respective state Constitutions requiring1 uniformity and equality of taxation.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Succession of Levy““ ‘It is not open to question that a state cannot, in the exercise of the power of taxation, tax obligations of the United States.’ Plummer v. Coler, 178 U. S. 115 , 20 S. Ct. 829 , 44 L. Ed. 998 .””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Succession of Hedden
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.