Best & Co. v. Maxwell’s Empirical Analysis
311 U.S. 454 · 1940
Citation profile
25 federal appellate · 15 district · 120 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 286 later decisions (68 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably Maryland v. Louisiana (1981), Exxon Corporation v. Governor of Maryland Shell Oil Company (1978)
25 federal appellate · 15 district · 120 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Robbins v. Taxing District of Shelby Co Tennessee · Welton v. The State of Missouri · McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Coal Mining Co. · McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Coal Mining Co.
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 286 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“In each case it is our duty to determine whether the statute under attack, whatever its name may be, will in its practical operation work discrimination against interstate commerce.”
15 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“not a regular retail merchant in the state,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In McGoldrick v. Berwind-White Co. ... we pointed out that the line of decisions following Robbins v. Shelby County . . . rested on the actual and potential discrimination inherent in certain fixed-sum license taxes.”
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.