United States of America v. American Tobacco Co.’s Empirical Analysis
221 U.S. 106 · 1911
Citation profile
265 federal appellate · 191 district · 98 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,049 later decisions (215 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2023 · most notably Connally v. General Construction Co. (1926), United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. (1940)
265 federal appellate · 191 district · 98 state decisions — followed in 27 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 Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · Gibbons v. Ogden · Edwin Hale v. William Henkel · Swift Company v. United States · United States v. Trans-Missouri Freight Ass'n
Cited together with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. · Board of Trade of City of Chicago v. United States · Swift Company v. United States · International Salt Co. v. United States
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 1,049 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. . . it was held in the Standard Oil case that as the words ‘restraint of trade’ at common law and in the law of this country at the time of the adoption of the Anti-trust Act only embraced acts or contracts or agreements or combinations which operated to the prejudice of the public interests by unduly restricting competition or unduly obstructing the due course of trade or which, either because of their inherent nature or effect or because of the evident purpose of the acts, tete., injuriously restrained trade, that the words as used in the statute were designed to have and did have but a like significance.”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * all the difficulties suggested by the mere form in which the assailed transactions are clothed become of no moment. This follows because, although it was held in the Standard Oil Case [Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. U. S., 221 U.S. 1 , 60, 31 S. Ct. 502, 55 L.Ed. 619] that, giving to the statute a reasonable construction, the words `restraint of trade' did not embrace all those normal and usual contracts essential to individual freedom, and the right to make which was necessary in order that the course of trade might be free, yet, as a result of the reasonable construction which was affixed to the statute, it was pointed out that the generic designation of the 1st and 2d sections of the law, when taken together, embraced every conceivable act which could possibly come within the spirit or purpose of the prohibitions of the law, without regard to the garb in which such acts were clothed. That is to say, it was held that, in view of the general language of the statute and the public policy which it manifested, there was no possibility of frustrating that policy by resorting to any disguise or subterfuge of form, since resort to reason rendered it impossible to escape, by any indirection, the prohibitions of the statute.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * not alone because of the dominion and control over the tobacco trade which actually exists, but because we think the conclusion of wrongful purpose and illegal combination is over-whelmingly established.”
3 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.