System Federation No. 91 v. Wright’s Empirical Analysis
1961
Citation profile
591 federal appellate · 101 district · 127 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,311 later decisions (25 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Dombrowski v. Pfister (1965), Agostini v. Felton Chancellor Board of Education of the City of New York (1997)
591 federal appellate · 101 district · 127 state decisions — followed in 25 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.
Appellate journey
reviewedSystem Federation No. 91 v. Wright (from Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 1 (§ 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act) · 45 U.S.C. § 152 (Railway Labor Act) · 5 U.S.C. § 1001
Relies on Steele v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad · United States v. Swift & Co. · Railway Employes' Department v. Hanson · The State of Pennsylvania v. The Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company et al.
Cited together with United States v. Swift & Co. · Rufo v. Inmates of Suffolk County Jail · United States v. United Shoe MacHinery Corp. · United States v. Armour & Co. · Local Number 93, International Ass'n of Firefighters v. City of Cleveland
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 1,311 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“There is also no dispute but that a sound judicial discretion may call for the modification of the terms of an injunctive decree if the circumstances, whether of law or fact, obtaining at the time of its issuance have changed, or new ones have since arisen. The source of the power to modify is of course the fact that an injunction often requires continuing supervision by the issuing court and always a continuing willingness to apply its powers and processes on behalf of the party who obtained that equitable relief.”
58 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“authority to adopt a consent decree comes only from the statute which the decree is intended to enforce.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“it is no longer equitable that the judgment should have prospective application.”
12 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent
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.