Ewing v. City of Leavenworth’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

1 federal appellate · 6 district · 15 state decisions

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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If it has happened that through engineering difficulties—as the interposition of a mountain or a river—the line is deflected so as to cross the boundary and run for the time being in another state than that of its principal location, does such detour in itself impress an external character on internal intercourse? For example, the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway Company is a corporation created under the laws of Tennessee, and through freight and passengers transported from Nashville to Chattanooga pass over a few miles in Alabama, and perhaps two miles in Georgia, but we had not supposed that the circumstance would render the taxation of that company, in respect of such business, by the state of Tennessee invalid * * * It should be remembered that the question does not arise as to the power of any other state than the state of the termini, nor as to taxation upon the property of the company situated elsewhere than in Pennsylvania, nor as to the regulation by Pennsylvania of the operations of this or any other company elsewhere, but it is simply whether, in the carriage of freight and passengers between two points in one state, the mere passage over the soil of another state renders that business foreign, which is domestic. We do not think such a view can be reasonably entertained * * *”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. NORFOLK & WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY v. Field