Nashville St Ry v. Browning’s Empirical Analysis
310 U.S. 362 · 1940
Citation profile
84 federal appellate · 24 district · 177 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 512 later decisions (92 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2020 · most notably Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York (1978), Adickes v. S. H. Kress & Co. (1970)
84 federal appellate · 24 district · 177 state decisions — followed in 30 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 Sioux City Bridge Co. v. Dakota County · Greene v. Louisville & Interurban Railroad · Pullman's Palace-Car Co v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania · Sunday Lake Iron Co. v. Township of Wakefield
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 512 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[d]eeply embedded traditional ways of carrying out state policy.”
31 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"`The States have a very wide discretion in the laying of their taxes. When dealing with their proper domestic concerns, and not trenching upon the prerogatives of the National Government or violating the guaranties of the Federal Constitution, the States have the attribute of sovereign powers in devising their fiscal systems to ensure revenue and foster their local interests. Of course, the States, in the exercise of their taxing power, are subject to the requirements of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. But that clause imposes no iron rule of equality, prohibiting the flexibility and variety that are appropriate to reasonable schemes of state taxation. * * * * * * "`If the selection or classification is neither capricious nor arbitrary, and rests upon some reasonable consideration of difference or policy, there is no denial of the equal protection of the law. That a statute may discriminate in favor of a certain class does not render it arbitrary if the discrimination is founded upon a reasonable distinction, or difference in state policy.'”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(R)ailroads, unlike farms and city lots and stocks and bonds, are not objects of exchange. The very notion of a 'full cash value' for a railroad is in many respects artificial. . . . Whatever may be the pretenses of exactitude in determining such a 'value' to claim for it 'scientific' validity, is to (use) the term in its loosest sense.”
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.