Louisville Gas & Electric Co. v. Coleman’s Empirical Analysis
277 U.S. 32 · 1928
Citation profile
102 federal appellate · 50 district · 349 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 731 later decisions (113 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Buckley v. Valeo (1976), Moore v. City of East Cleveland (1977)
102 federal appellate · 50 district · 349 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 Royster Guano Co v. Commonwealth of Virginia · Knowlton v. Moore · Gulf Ry Co v. Ellis · Magoun v. Illinois Trust & Savings Bank · Hayes v. State of Missouri
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 731 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When a legal distinction is determined, as no one doubts that it may be, between night and day, childhood and maturity, or any other extremes, a point has to be fixed or a line has to be drawn, or gradually picked out by successive decisions, to mark where the change takes place. Looked at by itself without regard to the necessity behind it the line or point seems arbitrary. It might as well or nearly as well be a little more to one side or the other. But when it is seen that a line or point there must be, and that there is no mathematical or logical way of fixing it precisely, the decision of the legislature must be accepted unless we can say that it is very wide of any reasonable mark.”
32 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“must rest upon some ground of difference having a fair and substantial relation to the object of the legislation.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'[D]iscriminations of an unusual character especially suggest careful consideration to determine whether they are obnoxious to the constitutional provision.'”
4 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.