Western Union Telegraph Company v. Call Publishing Company’s Empirical Analysis
181 U.S. 92 · 1901
Citation profile
45 federal appellate · 16 district · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 189 later decisions (15 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2023 · most notably Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States (1911), Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen (1917)
45 federal appellate · 16 district · 77 state decisions — followed in 25 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 Chicago Co v. City of Chicago · Smith v. State of Alabama · Railroad Company v. Lockwood · Interstate Commerce Commission v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad · Henry Wheaton v. Richard Peters
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 189 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““All individuals have equal rights, both in respect to service and charges. Of course, such equality of right does not prevent differences in the modes and kinds of service and different, charges based thereon. There is no cast-iron line of uniformity which prevents a charge from being above or below a particular sum, or requires that the service shall be exactly along the same line. But that principle of equality does forbid any difference in charge which is not based upon difference in service, and even when based upon difference of service must have some reasonable relation to the amount of difference, and cannot be so great as to produce an unjust discrimination.””
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'the body of those principles and rules of action relating to the government and security of persons and property, which derive their authority solely from usages and customs of immemorial antiquity, or from the judgments and decrees of the courts recognizing, affirming and enforcing such usages and customs; and, in this sense, particularly the ancient unwritten law of England.'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““There is no body of federal common law separate and distinct from the common law existing in the several states in the sense that there is a body of statute law enacted by Congress separate and distinct from the body of statute law enacted by the several states. But it is an entirely different thing to hold that there is no common law in force generally throughout the United States.””
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.