Utah Power & Light Co. v. Pfost’s Empirical Analysis
286 U.S. 165 · 1932
Citation profile
73 federal appellate · 38 district · 166 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 485 later decisions (118 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2018 · most notably Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority (1936), Parker v. Brown (1943)
73 federal appellate · 38 district · 166 state decisions — followed in 27 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 Story Parchment Co. v. Paterson Parchment Paper Co. · Field v. Clark · Dahnke-Walker Milling Co. v. Bondurant · Louisville Gas & Electric Co. v. Coleman · Dorchy v. State of Kansas
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 485 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[T]he process of generation is as essentially local as though electrical energy were a physical thing; and to that situation we must apply, as controlling, the general rule that commerce does not begin until manufacture is finished, and hence the commerce clause of the Constitution does not prevent the state from exercising exclusive control over the manufacture.”
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Upon the facts of the present case is the generation of electrical energy, like manufacture or production generally, a process essentially local in character and complete in itself; or is it so linked with the transmission as to make it an inseparable part of a transaction in interstate commerce?”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Undoubtedly, the administration of an act like this one is attended with some difficulty. Measurements and calculations are more or less Complicated. Absolute precision in either probably cannot be attained; but that is so to a greater or less degree in respect of most taxing laws. If, for example, absolute exactness of determination in respect of net income, deductions, valuation, losses, obsolescence, depreciation, etc., were required in cases arising under the federal income tax law, it is safe to say that the revenue from that source would be much curtailed. The law, which is said not to require impossibilities, must be satisfied, in many of its applications, with fair and reasonable approximations.””
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.