Day-Brite Lighting, Inc. v. Missouri’s Empirical Analysis
1952
Citation profile
99 federal appellate · 49 district · 250 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 590 later decisions (60 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Griswold v. State of Connecticut (1965), Williamson v. Lee Optical of Oklahoma, Inc. (1955)
99 federal appellate · 49 district · 250 state decisions — followed in 35 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 Nebbia v. People of State of New York · Tot v. United States · Joseph Lochner v. People of the State of New York · West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish · Libby, McNeill & Libby v. Alaska Industrial Board
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 590 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[W]e do not sit as a super legislature to weigh the wisdom of legislation nor to decide whether the policy which it expresses offends the public welfare.”
11 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“if our recent cases mean anything, they leave debatable issues as respect business, economic, and social affairs to legislative decisions. We could strike down this law only if we returned to the philosophy of the Lochner, Coppage [v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1 , 35 S.Ct. 240, 59 L.Ed. 441 (1915)] and Adkins [v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525 , 43 S.Ct. 394, 67 L.Ed. 785 (1923)] cases.”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“state legislatures have constitutional authority to experiment with new techniques; they are entitled to their own standard of the public welfare ...”
3 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.