Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York’s Empirical Analysis
336 U.S. 106 · 1949
Citation profile
380 federal appellate · 126 district · 448 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,370 later decisions (96 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2022 · most notably Dandridge v. Williams (1970), BMW of North America, Inc. v. Gore (1996)
380 federal appellate · 126 district · 448 state decisions — followed in 41 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 Prince v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Douglas v. City of Jeannette · SC Hwy. Dept. v. Barnwell Bros. · Saia v. People of State of New York
Cited together with Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. · Dandridge v. Williams · City of New Orleans v. Dukes · Lindsley v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co. · McGowan v. State of Maryland Gallagher
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 1,370 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“It is no requirement of equal protection that all evils of the same genus be eradicated or none at all.”
26 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected. Courts can take no better measure to assure that laws will be just than to require that laws be equal in operation.”
25 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“We would be trespassing on one of the most intensely local and specialized of all municipal problems if we held that this regulation had no relation to the traffic problem of New York City. It is the judgment of the local authorities that it does have such a relation. And nothing has been advanced which shows that to be palpably false.”
12 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.