St Paul Gaslight Company v. City of St Paul’s Empirical Analysis
181 U.S. 142 · 1901
Citation profile
26 federal appellate · 10 district · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 156 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2023 · most notably Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. City of Goldsboro (1914), Louisville Nashville Railroad Company v. Green Garrett (1913)
26 federal appellate · 10 district · 25 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 City of Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co · McCullough v. Commonwealth of Virginia · New Orleans Water-Works Co v. Louisiana Sugar Refining Co · Murray v. Charleston · Hamilton Gas Light & Coke Co. v. Hamilton City
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 156 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“amounts only to the contention that every case involving a controversy concerning a [governmental] contract is one of Federal cognizance, determinable ultimately in this court.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is no longer open to question that ‘a by-law or ordinance of a municipal corporation may be such an exercise of legislative power delegated by the Legislature to the corporation as a political subdivision of the state, having all the force of law within the limits of the municipality, that it may properly be considered as a law, within the meaning of this article of the Constitution of the United States.’ New Orleans Waterworks v. Louisiana Sugar Ref. Co., 125 U. S. 18, 31 , 31 L. Ed. 612 , 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 741, 748; Hamilton Gaslight & Coke Co. v. Hamilton City, 146 U. S. 258 , 36 L. Ed. 963 , 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 90; Walla Walla v. Walla Walla Water Co., 172 U. S. 1 , 43 L. Ed. 341 , 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 77.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“No legislative act is shown to exist, from the enforcement of which an impairment of the obligations of the contract did or could result.”
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.