Joy v. City of St. Louis’s Empirical Analysis
201 U.S. 332 · 1906
Citation profile
127 federal appellate · 29 district · 6 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 237 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Gully v. First Nat. Bank in Meridian (1936), Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Mottley (1908)
127 federal appellate · 29 district · 6 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 Shively v. Bowlby · Tennessee v. Union & Planters' Bank · Minnesota v. Northern Securities Co. · Strawbridge v. Curtiss · Starin v. Mayor Etc of the City of New York Independent Steam-Boat Co
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 237 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“But the contention overlooks repeated decisions of this court by which it has become firmly settled that whether a case is one arising under the Constitution or a law or treaty of the United States, in the sense of the jurisdictional statute (now § 24, Judicial Code), must be determined from what necessarily appears in the plaintiff’s statement of his own claim in the bill or declaration, unaided by anything alleged in anticipation of avoidance of defenses which it is thought the defendant may interpose.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““At law the plaintiff is never expec-ted to state matters which should come more properly from the other side. It is sufficient for each party to make out his own case. It is sufficient for the plaintiff to state his own cause of action, and he should not anticipate his adversary’s defense, for the reason that the latter may never make the defense sought to guarded against. * * * And it is equally well settled that a- suggestion in a complaint in any action at law that a defendant may or will set up a defense based upon a state statute or repugnant to the Constitution, does not make the suit one arising under the Constitution, and allegations of the complaint beyond those which state a cause of action are mere surplusage. When the statement of the plaintiff’s cause of action in legal and logical form, such as is required by the rules of good pleading, does not disclose that the suit is one arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States,'then the suit is not one arising under that Constitution or those laws, and the Circuit Court has no jurisdiction.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“A suit to enforce a right which takes its origin in the laws of the United States is not necessarily, or for that reason alone, one arising under those laws, for a suit does not so arise unless it really and substantially involves a dispute or controversy respecting the validity, construction, or effect of such a law, upon the determination of which the result depends.”
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.