Marsh v. State of Alabama’s Empirical Analysis
326 U.S. 501 · 1946
Citation profile
639 federal appellate · 205 district · 493 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 2,005 later decisions (128 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2024 · most notably Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co. (1982), Virginia State Board of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc. (1976)
639 federal appellate · 205 district · 493 state decisions — followed in 36 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 Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization · Chaplinsky v. State of New Hampshire · Thornhill v. Alabama · Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Cited together with Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority · Terry v. Adams · Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. · Evans v. Newton · Amalgamated Food Employees Union Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, Inc.
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 2,005 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Ownership does not always mean absolute dominion. The more an owner, for his advantage, opens up his property for use by the public in general, the more do his rights become circumscribed by the statutory and constitutional rights of those who use it.”
34 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the State's permitting a corporation to govern a community of citizens so as to restrict their fundamental liberties and the enforcement of such restraint by the application of a State statute”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In short the town and its shopping district are accessible to and freely used by the public in general and there is nothing to distinguish them from any other town and shopping center except the fact that the title to the property belongs to a private corporation.”
11 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.