Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. North Carolina Corporation Commission’s Empirical Analysis
206 U.S. 1 · 1907
Citation profile
26 federal appellate · 34 district · 170 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 416 later decisions (52 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern Railway Co. (1951), Interstate Commerce Commission v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad (1913)
26 federal appellate · 34 district · 170 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 Chicago Co v. City of Chicago · Smyth v. Ames · Munn v. Illinois · Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co. · Chicago Ry Co v. Wellman
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 416 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Of course, the fact that the furnishing of a necessary facility ordered may occasion an incidental pecuniary loss is an important criteria to be taken into view in determining the reasonableness of the order, but it is not the only one. As the duty to furnish necessary facilities is coterminous with the powers of the corporation, the obligation to discharge that duty must be considered in connection with the nature and productiveness of the corporate business as a whole, the character of the services required, and the public need for its performance."”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The elementary proposition that railroads from the public nature of the business by them carried on and the interest which the public have in their operation are subject, as to their state business, to state regulation, which may be exerted either directly by the legislative'authority or by administrative bodies endowed with power to that end,- is not and could not be successfully questioned in view of the long line of authorities sustaining that doctrine.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““As the public power to regulate railways and the private right of ownership of such property coexist and do not the one destroy the other, it has been settled that the right of ownership of. railway property, like other property rights, finds protection in constitutional guarantees, and, therefore, wherever the power of regulation is exerted in such an arbitrary and unreasonable way as to cause it to be in effect not a regulation, but an infringement upon the right of ownership; such an exertion of power is void because repugnant to the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.””
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.