Northern Pacific Railway Co. v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
1958
Citation profile
1,623 federal appellate · 466 district · 347 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,219 later decisions (118 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably Mitsubishi Motors Corporation v. Soler Chrysler-Plymouth Inc Soler Chrysler-Plymouth Inc (1985), Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services, Inc. (1992)
1,623 federal appellate · 466 district · 347 state decisions — followed in 32 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
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 1 (§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act) · 15 U.S.C. § 14 (§ 3 of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914) · 15 U.S.C. § 2 (§ 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act) · 15 U.S.C. § 29
Relies on United States v. Socony-Vacuum Oil Co. · Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · United States v. E. I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. · Sartor v. Arkansas Natural Gas Corp.
Cited together with International Salt Co. v. United States · Continental Inc v. Gte Sylvania Incorporated · Times-Picayune Pub Co v. United States · Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States · Klor's, Inc. v. Broadway-Hale Stores, 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 4,219 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“there are certain agreements or practices which because of their pernicious effect on competition and lack of any redeeming virtue are conclusively presumed to be unreasonable and therefore illegal without elaborate inquiry as to the precise harm they have caused or the business excuse for their use.”
246 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“an agreement by a party to sell one product but only on the condition that the buyer also purchases a different (or tied) product, or at least agrees that he will not purchase that product from any other supplier.”
123 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Of course where the seller has no control or dominance over the tying product so that it does not represent an effectual weapon to pressure buyers into taking the tied item any restraint of trade attributable to such tying arrangements would obviously be insignificant at most. As a simple example, if one of a dozen food stores in a community were to refuse to sell flour unless the buyer also took sugar it would hardly tend to restrain competition in sugar if its competitors were ready and able to sell flour by itself.”
16 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.