Harrison v. St. Louis & San Francisco Railroad’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

70 federal appellate · 38 district · 27 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 223 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[i]t may not be doubted that the judicial power of the United States as created by the Constitution and provided for by Congress pursuant to its constitutional authority, is a power wholly independent of state action and which therefore the several States may not by any exertion of authority in any form, directly or indirectly, destroy, abridge, limit or render inefficacious.”

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Copper Queen Consol. Mining Co. v. Jones · Lane v. Equitable Trust Co.

2. “• “Those cases involved state legislation as to a subject over which there was complete state authority; that is, the exclusion from the state of a corporation which was so organized that it had no authority to do anything but a purely intrastate business, and the decisions rested upon the want of power to deprive a state of its right to deal with a subject which was in its complete control, even though an unlawful motive might have impelled the state to exert its lawful' power. But that the application of those cases to a situation where complete power in a state over the subject dealt with does not exist has since been so repeatedly passed upon as to cause the question not to be open. Western Union Telegraph Company v. Kansas, 216 U.S. 1 , 30 S.Ct. 190 , 54 L.Ed. 355 ; Pullman Company v. Kansas, 216 U.S. 56 , 30 S.Ct. 232 , 54 L.Ed. 378 ; International Textbook Company v. Pigg, 217 U.S. 91 , 30 S.Ct. 481 , 54 L.Ed. 678 , 27 L.R.A.,N.S., 493, 18 Ann.Cas. 1103; Buck Stove & Range Co. v. Vickers, 226 U.S. 205 , 33 S.Ct. 41 , 57 L.Ed. 189 , and Herndon v. Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry., 218 U.S. 135 , 30 S.Ct. 633 , 54 L.Ed. 970 . The grounds of the decision in the last case show the extremely narrow scope of the rulings in the Doyle [v. Continental Ins. Co., 94 U.S. 535 , 24 L.Ed. 148 ] and Security Mut. Life Ins. Co. v. Prewitt, [ 202 U.S. 246 , 26 S.Ct. 619 , 50 L.Ed. 1014 ] Cases, and render their inapplicability to this case certain. Indeed, the ruling in the Herndon Case and in ”

   3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Copper Queen Consol. Mining Co. v. Jones · Citizens' Ins. v. Hebert

3. “Ordinarily, the opinions heretofore rendered would constitute the law of the case, and the matters therein decided would not be again examined by us; but the law of the case rule has no application here for the reason that the right claimed by appellant is one which arises under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and with reference to all such questions this court is not one of final jurisdiction, but is simply an intermediate appellate court, from whose decision an appeal lies to the Supreme Court of the United States, the decisions of which court, in all such matters, are binding upon and must be followed by us.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Foy & Shemwell v. Georgia-Alabama Power Co. · Mississippi State Tax Commission v. Brown