Chicago Burlington Quincy Railway Company v. People of the State of Illinois I O Grimwood F L’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

7 federal appellate · 7 district · 247 state decisions

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 302 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. ““The constitutional requirement of due process of law, which embraces compensation for private property taken for public use, applies in every case of the exertion of governmental power. If in the execution of any power, no matter what it is, the government, Federal or state, finds it necessary to take private property for public use, it must obey the constitutional injunction to make or secure just compensation to the owner.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Prairie Oil & Gas Co. v. United States · Electro-Nucleonics, Inc. v. Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission

2. ““We hold that the police power of a state embraces regulations designed to promote the public convenience or the general prosperity, as well as regulations designed to promote the public health, the public morals or the public safety.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. State v. Michigan Wisconsin Pipeline Co. · State v. Pitney

3. ““But the railway company, in effect, if not in words, insists that the rights which it asserts in this case are superior and paramount to any that the public has to use the water course in question for the purpose of draining the lands in its vicinity, although such water course was in existence, for the benefit of the public, long before the railway company constructed its bridge. This contention cannot, however, be sustained, except upon the theory that the acquisition by the railway company of a right of way through the lands in question, and the construction on that right of way of a bridge across Rob Roy creek, at the point in question, carried with it a surrender by the state of its power, by appropriate agencies, to provide for such use of that natural water course as might subsequently become necessary or proper for the public interests. If the state could part with such a power, held in trust for the public (which is by no means admitted), it has not done so in any statute either by express words or by necessary implication. When the railway company laid the foundations of its bridge in Rob Roy creek, it did so subject to the rights of the public in the use of that water course, and also subject to the possibility that new circumstances and future public necessities might, in the judgment of the state, reasonably require a material change in the methods used in crossing the creek with cars.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Town of Emery v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co.