Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co. v. Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis
179 U.S. 388 · 1900
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 3 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 47 later decisions (10 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1956 · most notably Siler v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad (1909), Employers' Liability Cases (1908)
5 federal appellate · 3 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.
Relationships
Relies on Plessy v. Ferguson · Hall v. DeCuir · Louisville v. State of Mississippi · Ohio Valley Railway's Receiver v. Lander
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 47 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Sec. 3962. Separate cars for white and colored passengers. — All persons, natural or artificial, who are now, or may hereafter be, engaged in running or operating any railroad in this State by steam for the transportation of passengers are hereby required to furnish separate cars or coaches for the travel or transportation of the white and colored passengers on their respective lines of railroad. Each compartment of a coach divided by a good and substantial partition, with a door therein, shall be deemed a separate coach within the meaning of this section, and each separate coach or compartment shall bear in some conspicuous place appropriate words in plain letters, indicating the race for which it is set apart.” “Sec. 3963. Company to make no discrimination in quality of accommodations for white and colored passengers.- — No difference or discrimination shall be'made in the quality, convenience or accommodation in the cars or coaches or partitions set apart for white and colored passengers under the preceding section.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“Indeed, we are by no means satisfied that the Court of Appeals did not give the correct construction to this statute in limiting its operations to domestic commerce. It is scarcely courteous to impute to a Legislature the enactment of a law which it knew to be unconstitutional, and if it were settled that a separate coach law was unconstitutional, as applied to interstate commerce, the law applying on its face to all passengers should be limited to such as the Legislature to'ere competent to deal with. The Court of Appeals has found such to be the intention of the General Assembly in this case, or, at least, that if such were not its intention, the law may be supported as applying alone to domestic commerce. In thus holding the act to be severable, it is laying down a principle of construction from which there is no appeal.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Rowley v. Clarke““It will also bo observed that this is not a civil action brought by an individual to recover damages for being compelled to occupy one particular compartment, or prevented from riding on the train, and hence there is no question of personal insult or alleged violation of personal right.””
1 later decision 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.