Hart Refineries v. Harmon’s Empirical Analysis
278 U.S. 499 · 1929
Citation profile
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 94 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2001 · most notably Nashville St Ry v. Wallace (1933), Gregg Dyeing Co. v. Query (1932)
4 federal appellate · 12 district · 56 state decisions — followed in 20 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 Bell's Gap Railroad v. Pennsylvania · Oliver Iron Mining Co. v. Lord · Home Insurance Co of New York v. State of New York · American Sugar Refining Co. v. Louisiana · Sonneborn Bros. v. Cureton
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 94 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Statutes which tax one class of property while exempting another class necessarily result in imposing a greater burden upon the property taxed than would be the case if the omitted property were included. But such statutes do not create an inequality in the constitutional sense. Nor is the imposition of an excise tax upon one occupation or one activity from which other and different occupation * * * are exempt, a denial of equal protection. It is enough if all in the same class are included and treated alike. These propositions are so firmly established by repeated decisions of this court that further discussion is unnecessary (citing numerous other decisions of the United States Supreme Court).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Interstate transportation having ended, the taxing power of' the state in respect of the commodity which was the subject of such transportation,' may, so far as the commerce clause of the federal Constitution (article 1, § 8, cl. 3) is concerned, be exerted in any way which the state’s Constitution and laws permit, provided, of course, it does not discriminate against the commodity because of' its-' origin in another state.””
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.