Hudson County Water Co. v. McCarter’s Empirical Analysis
209 U.S. 349 · 1908
Citation profile
166 federal appellate · 67 district · 370 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 885 later decisions (120 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2024 · most notably Rochin v. People of California (1952), Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978)
166 federal appellate · 67 district · 370 state decisions — followed in 40 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 Mugler v. State of Kansas State of Kansas Tufts · Joseph Lochner v. People of the State of New York · Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co. · Geer v. State of Connecticut
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 885 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[i]t sometimes is difficult to fix boundary stones between the private right of property and the police power when, as in the case at bar, we know of few decisions that are very much in point.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“One whose rights, such as they are, are subject to state restriction, cannot remove them from the power of the State by making a contract about them.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] man cannot acquire a right to property by his desire to use it in commerce among the States,”
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.