Ware & Leland v. Mobile County’s Empirical Analysis
209 U.S. 405 · 1908
Citation profile
27 federal appellate · 17 district · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 150 later decisions (42 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 1982 · most notably Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. United States (1918), United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Ass'n (1944)
27 federal appellate · 17 district · 34 state decisions — followed in 14 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedWare v. Mobile County
Relationships
Relies on Paul v. Virginia · Robbins v. Taxing District of Shelby Co Tennessee · Hooper v. People of State of California · Lottery Case · Leloup v. Port of Mobile
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 150 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““When the delivery was upon a contract of sale made by the broker, the seller was at liberty to acquire the cotton in the market where the delivery was required or elsewhere. He did not contract to ship it from one state to the place of delivery in another state. And though it is stipulated that shipments were made from Alabama to the foreign state in some instances, that was not because of any contractual obligation so to do. In neither class of contracts, for sale or purchase, was there necessarily any movement of commodities in interstate traffic, because of the contracts made by the brokers. These contracts are not, therefore, the subjects of interstate commerce, any more than in the insurance eases, where the policies are ordered and delivered in another state than that of the residence and office of the company. The delivery, when one was made, was not because of any contract obliging an interstate shipment, and the fact that the purchaser might thereafter transmit the subject-matter of purchase by means of interstate carriage did not make the contracts as made and executed the subjects of interstate commerce.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““.. . contracts between citizens of different states are not the subjects of interstate commerce, simply because they are negotiated between citizens of different States, or by the agent of a company in another State, where the contract itself is to be completed and carried out wholly within the borders of a State, although such contracts incidentally affect interstate trade.””
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.