Mississippi Railroad Commission v. Mobile & Ohio Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
244 U.S. 388 · 1917
Citation profile
6 federal appellate · 24 district · 55 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 132 later decisions (21 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 1992 · most notably Alabama Public Service Commission v. Southern Railway Co. (1951), Erie Railroad v. Board of Public Utility Commissioners (1921)
6 federal appellate · 24 district · 55 state decisions — followed in 15 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 Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line Co. · Louisville Nashville Railroad Company v. Green Garrett · Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company v. North Carolina Corporation Commission · Lake Shore Ry Co v. State of Ohio Lawrence · Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. North Dakota ex rel. McCue
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 132 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““In view of the adjudications these principles must be regarded as settled: 1. A railroad corporation is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment declaring that no State shall deprive any person of property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 2. A state enactment, or regulations made under the authority of a state enactment, establishing rates for the transportation of persons or property by railroad that will not admit of the carrier earning such compensation as under all the circumstances is just to it and to the public, would deprive such carrier of its property without due process of law and deny to it the equal protection of the laws, and would therefore be repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. 3. While rates for the transportation of persons and property within the limits of a State are primarily for its determination, the question whether they are so unreasonably low as to deprive the carrier of its property without such compensation as the Constitution secures, and therefore without due process of law, can not be so conclusively determined by the legislature of the State or by regulations adopted under its authority, that the matter may not become the subject of judicial inquiry. * * *””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““This power of regulation, if it is exercised in such an arbitrary or unreasonable manner as to prevent the company from obtaining a fair return upon the property invested in the public service, passes beyond lawful bounds and is void, because repugnant to the due process of law provision of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.””
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.