King v. Order of United Commercial Travelers of America’s Empirical Analysis
333 U.S. 153 · 1948
Citation profile
385 federal appellate · 113 district · 25 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 873 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 2025 · most notably Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate J Bosch Second National Bank of New Haven (1967), England v. Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners (1964)
385 federal appellate · 113 district · 25 state decisions
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
reviewedOrder of United Commercial Travelers v. King (from Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Relies on Erie Co v. Tompkins · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York · West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co. · Guaranty Trust Co. v. York · Vandenbark v. Owens-Illinois Glass 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 873 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Court of Common Pleas [did] not appear to have such importance and competence within [the State’s] own judicial system that its decisions should be taken as authoritative expositions of that State’s ‘law’ ” (id. at 161, 68 S.Ct. at 492 ), another state court had rendered an opinion rejecting the reasoning of the court of common pleas, illustrating”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[F]ederal courts are bound by decisions of a state's intermediate appellate courts unless there is persuasive evidence that the highest state court would rule otherwise.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * Nor is our decision to be taken as promulgating a general rule that federal courts need never abide by determinations of state law by state trial courts. * * *”
2 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.