Independent Warehouses, Inc. v. Scheele’s Empirical Analysis
331 U.S. 70 · 1947
Citation profile
8 federal appellate · 3 district · 155 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 207 later decisions (21 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2025 · most notably City of Lakewood v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co. (1988), Rescue Army v. Municipal Court of Los Angeles (1947)
8 federal appellate · 3 district · 155 state decisions — followed in 19 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 Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co. · Sparf v. United States · Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. State of West Virginia State of Ohio · Wisconsin v. J. C. Penney Co. · Nashville St Ry v. Wallace
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 207 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The question is always one of substance, and in each case it is necessary to consider the particular occasion or purpose of the interruption during which the tax is sought to be levied.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The states may not impose direct burdens upon interstate commerce; that is, they may not regulate or restrain that which from its nature should be under the control of the one authority and be free from restriction save as it is governed in the manner that the national legislature constitutionally ordains. This limitation applies to the exertion of the state's taxing power as well as to any other interference by the state with the essential freedom of interstate commerce. Thus, the states cannot tax interstate commerce, either by laying the tax upon the business which constitutes such commerce or the privilege of engaging in it, or upon the receipts, as such, derived from it. Similarly, the states may not tax property in transit in interstate commerce.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is inherent in the exercise of the power to tax that a state be free to select the subjects of taxation and to grant exemptions. Neither due process nor equal protection imposes upon a state any rigid rule of equality of taxation .... This Court has repeatedly held that inequalities which result from a singling out of one particular class for taxation or exemption, infringe no constitutional limitation. [A legislature] may make distinctions of degree having a rational basis, and when subjected to judicial scrutiny they must be presumed to rest on that basis if there is any conceivable state of facts which would support it.” Carmichael v. Southern Coal & Coke Co., 301 U.S. 495, 509 , 57 S.Ct. 868, 872 , 81 L.Ed. 1245 (1937).”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Athanson v. Meskill
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.