Bi-Metallic Investment Company v. State Board of Equalization’s Empirical Analysis
239 U.S. 441 · 1915
Citation profile
379 federal appellate · 77 district · 317 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,178 later decisions (66 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1978), Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co. (1982)
379 federal appellate · 77 district · 317 state decisions — followed in 41 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 Davidson v. New Orleans · Hagar v. · State Railroad Tax Cases Taylor Collector et al. v. Secor et al. · Wolfe Londoner v. City and County of Denver
Cited together with Wolfe Londoner v. City and County of Denver · Board of Regents of State Colleges v. Roth · United States v. Florida East Coast Railway Co. · Mathews v. Eldridge · Goldberg v. Kelly
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 1,178 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Where a rule of conduct applies to more than a few people, it is impracticable that everyone should have a direct voice in its adoption. The Constitution does not require all public acts to be done in town meeting or an assembly of the whole. General statutes within the state power are passed that affect the person or property of individuals, sometimes to the point of ruin, without giving them a chance to be heard. Their rights are protected in the only way that they can be in a complex society, by their power, immediate or remote, over those who make the rule.”
69 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[a] relatively small number of persons [are] concerned,”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“whether all individuals have a constitutional right to be heard before a matter can be decided in which all are equally concerned.”
2 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.