Kansas City Southern Railway Company v. Kaw Valley Drainage District of Wyandotte County Kansas No 313 Kansas City Terminal Railway Company’s Empirical Analysis
233 U.S. 75 · 1914
Citation profile
10 federal appellate · 7 district · 32 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 122 later decisions (22 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2008 · most notably Southern Pac Co v. State of Arizona Sullivan (1945), Baldwin v. G. A. F. Seelig, Inc. (1935)
10 federal appellate · 7 district · 32 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Swift Company v. United States · Railroad Company v. Husen · Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. North Carolina Corporation Commission · West v. Kansas Natural Gas Co. · William Austin v. State of Tennessee
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 122 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The freedom from interference on the part of the states is not confined to a simple prohibition of laws impairing it, but extends to interference by any ultimate organ. * * * It would seem that the same principle applies to railroads under the commerce clause of the Constitution, especially if taken in connection with a somewhat similar statute now Rev. Stat. § 5258 [45 USCA § 84], and so it is held. * * * “The decisions also show that a state cannot avoid the operation of this rule by simply invoking the convenient apologetics of the police power. It repeatedly has been said or implied that a direct interference with commerce among the states could not be justified in this way. 'The state can do nothing which will directly burden or impede the interstate traffic of the company, or impair the usefulness of its facilities for such traffic.’ ””
4 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.