Brown-Forman Company v. Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Empirical Analysis
217 U.S. 563 · 1910
Citation profile
24 federal appellate · 27 district · 139 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 286 later decisions (54 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2019 · most notably Nebbia v. People of State of New York (1934), Nordlinger v. Hahn (1992)
24 federal appellate · 27 district · 139 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 M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Huntington v. Attrill · Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Co. · Gulf Ry Co v. Ellis · Brown v. Maryland
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 286 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““A very wide discretion must be conceded to the legislative power of the state in the classification of trades, callings, businesses, or occupations which may be subjected to special forms of regulation or taxation through an excise or license tax. If the selection or classification is neither capricious nor arbitrary, and rests upon some reasonable consideration of difference or policy, there is no denial of the equal protection of the law.””
16 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.