Katzenbach v. McClung’s Empirical Analysis
1964
Citation profile
627 federal appellate · 121 district · 103 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 1,410 later decisions (91 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2025 · most notably Shapiro v. Thompson (1969), United States v. Lopez (1995)
627 federal appellate · 121 district · 103 state decisions — followed in 22 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 Consolidated Edison Co of New York v. National Labor Relations Board · Gibbons v. Ogden · United States v. Carolene Products Co. · Wickard v. Filburn · United States v. Darby
Cited together with Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States · Wickard v. Filburn · Perez v. United States · United States v. Darby · United States v. Lopez
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 1,410 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““[W]here we find that the legislators, in light of the facts and testimony before them, have a rational basis for finding a chosen regulatory scheme necessary to the protection of commerce, our investigation is at an end.””
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“, and thus subjected the restaurant to Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination in places of public accommodation. The Court explained, 24 [m]uch is said about a restaurant business being local but”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“'those which are completely within a particular state, which do not affect other states, and with which it is not necessary to interfere, for the purpose of executing some of the general powers of the government'”
6 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.