United States Ex Pel Attorney General of the United States v. Delaware & Hudson Company Same’s Empirical Analysis
Citation profile
3 federal appellate · 35 district · 92 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 227 later decisions (16 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Environment (1998), Mondou v. New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad (1912)
3 federal appellate · 35 district · 92 state decisions — followed in 31 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 Ex Parte: Edward T Young · Armour Packing Company v. United States · New York New Haven Hartford Railroad Company v. Interstate Commerce Commission · Conley v. Mathieson Alkali Works · Harriman v. Interstate Commerce Commission
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 227 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]here a statute is susceptible of two constructions, by one of which grave and doubtful constitutional questions arise and by the other of which such questions are avoided, our duty is to adopt the latter.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““We' then construe the statute as prohibiting a railroad company engaged in interstate commerce from transporting in such commerce'articles or commodities under the following circumstances and conditions: “(a) When the article or commodity has been manufactured, mined, or produced by a carrier, or under its authority, and at the time of transportation the carrier has not m good foMlv before the act of transportation dissociated itself from such article or commodity. “(h) When the carrier owns the article or commodity to be transported in whole or in part. ‘•(c) When the carrier at the time of transportation has an interest, direct or indirect, in a legal or equitable sense, in the article or commodity, not including, therefore, articles or commodities manufactured, mined, produced or owned, etc., by a bona fide corporation in which the railroad company is a stockholder.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * If the contention of the government as to the meaning of the commodities clause be well founded, at least a majority of the court are of the opinion that we may not avoid determining the following grave constitutional questions: (1) Whether the power of Congress to regulate commerce embraces the authority to control or prohibit the mining, manufacturing, production, or ownership of an article or commodity, not because of some inherent quality of the commodity, but simply because it may become the subject of interstate commerce. (2) If the right to regulate commerce does not thus extend, can it be impliedly made to embrace subjects which it does not control, by forbidding a railroad company engaged in interstate commerce from carrying lawful articles or commodities, because, at some time prior to the transportation, it bad manufactured, mined, produced, or owned them, etc.? And involved in the determination of the foregoing-questions we shall necessarily be called upon to decide: (a) Did the adoption of the Constitution and the grant of power to Congress to regulate commerce have the effect of depriving the states of the authority to endow a carrier with the attribute of producing as well as transporting particular commodities, a power which the states from the beginning have freely exercised, and by the exertion of which governmental power the resources of the several states have been developed, their enterprises fostered, and vast investments of capital have been mad”
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.