Erie Railroad v. Winfield’s Empirical Analysis
244 U.S. 170 · 1917
Citation profile
163 federal appellate · 15 district · 238 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 492 later decisions (18 by the Supreme Court) — most recently July 2019 · most notably International Shoe Co. v. Pinkus (1929), Lindgren v. United States (1930)
163 federal appellate · 15 district · 238 state decisions — followed in 34 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 New York Central Railroad v. Winfield · North Carolina Railroad Company v. James a Zachary · Winfield v. Erie Railroad
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 492 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Like his trip through the yard to his engine in the morning, it was a necessary incident of his day's work, and partook of the character of that work as a whole * * *.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But such a presumption cannot be indulged here, and this for the reason that by the federal act the entire subject, as respects carriers by railroad and their employees in interstate commerce, was taken without the reach of state laws.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“establishes a rule or regulation which is intended to operate uniformly in all the States, as respects interstate commerce, and in that field it is both paramount and exclusive.”
1 later decision 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.