Nashville St Ry v. Walters’s Empirical Analysis
294 U.S. 405 · 1935
Citation profile
47 federal appellate · 15 district · 237 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 389 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2019 · most notably Baker v. Carr (1962), Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City (1978)
47 federal appellate · 15 district · 237 state decisions — followed in 34 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 Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon · Lawton v. Steele · Hadacheck v. Sebastian · Nectow v. City of Cambridge · Sioux City Bridge Co. v. Dakota County
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 389 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[a] statute valid when enacted may become invalid by change in the conditions to which it is applied”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The appellants rely heavily on the Nashville case, supra, but that decision is in accord with the long-established rule which we here follow and which the Commission applied. As this Court said in the Nashville case: "The claim of unconstitutionality rests wholly upon the special facts here shown." 294 U.S. at page 413 , 55 S.Ct. [486] at page 487. In that case, the railroad's share of the cost was fixed at 50% by a Tennessee statute and no consideration was given by the Supreme Court of Tennessee as to whether the application of the statutory amount was unreasonable under the special facts advanced. The grade separation ordered in the Nashville case was located in the rural community of Lexington, Tennessee, which had a population in 1910 of 1,497, in 1920 of 1,792, and in 1930 of 1,823. The improvement was not required to meet the transportation needs of Lexington and was being constructed without regard to that community's growth or to considerations of public safety and convenience resulting from such growth. The highway there under improvement was part of the State highway system and the grade was to be removed primarily as part of economic and engineering planning and to qualify the improvement of the highway for federal aid. Other facts offered pointed principally to the state and nation-wide nature of the highway system and the particular highway there involved, the competition afforded railroads by the users of such highways and the effect of such competition on the ”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The claim of unconstitutionality rests wholly upon the special facts here shown.”
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.