Nectow v. City of Cambridge’s Empirical Analysis
277 U.S. 183 · 1928
Citation profile
192 federal appellate · 62 district · 532 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,012 later decisions (23 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2022 · most notably Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp. (1977), Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978)
192 federal appellate · 62 district · 532 state decisions — followed in 42 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 Village of Euclid Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co · Caroline Dobbins v. City of Los Angeles · Zahn v. Board of Public Works · Thomas Cusack Company v. City of Chicago
Cited together with Village of Euclid Ohio v. Ambler Realty Co · Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City · Agins v. City of Tiburon · Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon · Goldblatt v. Town of Hempstead
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 1,012 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The governmental power to interfere by zoning regulations with the general rights of the land owner by restricting the character of his use, is not unlimited, and other questions aside, such restriction cannot be imposed if it does not bear a substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.”
27 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, having no substantial relation to the public health, safety, morals, or general welfare.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is made pretty clear that because of the industrial and railroad purposes to which the immediately adjoining lands to the south and east have been devoted and for which they are zoned, the locus is of comparatively little value for the limited uses permitted by the ordinance.””
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.