United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation v. Western Union Telegraph Co’s Empirical Analysis
275 U.S. 415 · 1928
Citation profile
62 federal appellate · 20 district · 20 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 150 later decisions (24 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Springer v. Government of the Philippine Islands Agoncillo (1928), Rainwater v. United States (1958)
62 federal appellate · 20 district · 20 state decisions
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.
Appellate journey
reviewedUnited States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corp. v. Western Union Telegraph Co. (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Sloan Shipyards Corporation v. United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation · Pensacola Telegraph Company v. Western Union Telegraph Company · Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Esteve Bros. & Co. · Telegraph Company v. Texas · Bank of the United States v. Planters' Bank
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 150 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““That telegraphic communications between the several departments of the government of the United States and their officers and agents shall, in their transmission over the lines of any of said companies, have priority over all other business, and shall be sent at rates to be annually fixed by the Postmaster-General.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““An important, if not the chief, reason for employing a corporate agency was to enable the Government to employ commercial methods and to conduct the operations with a freedom supposed to be inconsistent with accountability to the Treasury under its established procedure and with its control over the financial operations of the United States.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“Instrumentalities like the national banks or the federal reserve banks, in which there are private interests, are not departments of the government. They are private corporations in which the government has an interest.”
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.