William Austin v. State of Tennessee’s Empirical Analysis
179 U.S. 343 · 1900
Citation profile
29 federal appellate · 40 district · 111 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 300 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2025 · most notably Swift Company v. United States (1905), Simpson v. Shepard (1913)
29 federal appellate · 40 district · 111 state decisions — followed in 33 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 · Gibbons v. Ogden · Mugler v. State of Kansas State of Kansas Tufts · Barbier v. Connolly · Brown v. Maryland
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 300 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e should be shutting our eyes to what is constantly passing before them were we to affect an ignorance of the fact that a belief in [cigarettes’] deleterious effects, particularly upon young people, has become very general, and that communications are constantly finding their way into the public press denouncing their use as fraught with great danger....”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We have had repeated occasion to hold, where state legislation has been attacked as violative either of the power of Congress over interstate commerce or of the Fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, that if the action of the state Legislature were as a bona fide exercise of its police power, and dictated by a genuine regard for the preservation of the public health or safety, such legislation would be respected, though it might interfere indirectly with interstate commerce.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Of course it is one thing to force into a state, against its will, articles or commodities that can have no possible connection with or relation to the health of the people. It is quite a different thing to force into the markets of a state against its will articles or commodities which, like cigarettes, may not unreasonably be held to be injurious to health.’’”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.