Louisville & Nashville Railroad v. Mottley’s Empirical Analysis
211 U.S. 149 · 1908
Citation profile
1,167 federal appellate · 540 district · 65 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 3,763 later decisions (103 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably United Mine Workers of America v. Gibbs (1966), Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle (1977)
1,167 federal appellate · 540 district · 65 state decisions — followed in 18 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 Mansfield Ry Co v. Swan · Tennessee v. Union & Planters' Bank · Postal Telegraph Cable Co v. State of Alabama · Minnesota v. Northern Securities Co.
Cited together with Franchise Tax Board of the State of California v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern California · Gully v. First Nat. Bank in Meridian · Metropolitan Life Insurance v. Taylor · Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams · Skelly Oil Co. v. Phillips Petroleum 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 3,763 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A] suit arises under the Constitution and laws of the United States only when the plaintiff's statement of his own cause of action shows that it is based upon those laws or that Constitution.”
36 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] right or immunity created by the Constitution or laws of the United States must be an element, and an essential one, of the plaintiff's cause of action.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“defined and limited by statute, is not exceeded.”
9 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.