Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority’s Empirical Analysis
297 U.S. 288 · 1936
Citation profile
2,327 federal appellate · 600 district · 750 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 6,339 later decisions (587 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2026 · most notably Jackson v. Virginia (1979), Slack v. McDaniel (2000)
2,327 federal appellate · 600 district · 750 state decisions — followed in 48 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedTennessee Valley Authority v. Ashwander (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Ex Parte: Edward T Young · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Crowell v. Benson · Massachusetts v. Mellon
Cited together with Rescue Army v. Municipal Court of Los Angeles · Crowell v. Benson · Buckley v. Valeo · Aetna Life Ins Co of Hartford Conn v. Haworth · Baker v. Carr
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 6,339 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The Court will not pass upon a constitutional question although properly presented by the record, if there is also present some other ground upon which the case may be disposed of.”
128 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“When the validity of an act of the Congress is drawn in question, and even if a serious doubt of constitutionality is raised, it is a cardinal principle that this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided.”
23 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“for its own governance in the cases confessedly within its jurisdiction,”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence
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.