Bacon v. Walker’s Empirical Analysis
204 U.S. 311 · 1907
Citation profile
14 federal appellate · 26 district · 194 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 311 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 1979 · most notably Village of Euclid Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co (1926), Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same (1925)
14 federal appellate · 26 district · 194 state decisions — followed in 36 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 Yick Wo v. Hopkins · Ohio Oil Company v. State of Indiana · People of the State of New York Ex Rel Albert Hatch v. Edward Reardon a · Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Co. v. Illinois ex rel. Drainage Commissioners · Clark v. Nash
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 311 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We there said in substance that, the power of regulation existing, the imposition of some limit to a right, when its exercise would impinge upon the equal right of another, was the exercise of legislative power, and that the circumstances which induced it could not be pronounced illegal ‘on surmise or on the barren letter of the statute.’ And we said, further, that where equal rights existed the state has an interest in their accommodation. *' * *' The case, and those it 'cites, are authority for the position that a state may consider the relation of rights and accommodate their coexistence, and, in the interest of the community, limit one that others may be enjoyed.” The court further said: “The determining consideration is the power of the state over, and its regulation» of, a property in which others besides the companies may have rights, and-in which the state has an interest to adjust and preserve; natural gas being one of the resources of the state. And in this consideration it is more important to consider, not for what a particular owner uses the gas, but the proportion of his use to that of others, or, it may be, the prevention of use by others.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It (the police power) is not confined * * * to the suppression of what is offensive, disorderly or unsanitary. It extends to so dealing with the conditions which exist in the State as to bring out of them the greatest welfare of its people."”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“for any person owning or having. charge of [the] sheep to herd the same, or permit them to be herded on the land or possessory claims of other -persons, or to herd the same or permit them to graze within two miles of the dwelling house of the owner or owners of said possessory claim.”
2 later decisions 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.