Pike v. Bruce Church, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1970
Citation profile
983 federal appellate · 540 district · 831 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 4,060 later decisions (144 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2025 · most notably Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission (1977), United States v. Lopez (1995)
983 federal appellate · 540 district · 831 state decisions — followed in 48 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 28 U.S.C. § 1253 · 28 U.S.C. § 2281
Relies on Parker v. Brown · Southern Pac Co v. State of Arizona Sullivan · Toomer v. Witsell · Huron Portland Cement Company v. City of Detroit Michigan
Cited together with City of Philadelphia v. New Jersey · Hughes v. Oklahoma · Brown-Forman Distillers Corporation v. New York State Liquor Authority · Maine v. Taylor · Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Commission
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 4,060 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“clearly excessive in relation to the putative local benefits.”
391 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“viewed with particular suspicion state statutes requiring business operations to be performed in the home State that could more efficiently be performed elsewhere.”
16 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[s]tate's tenuous interest in having the company's cantaloupes identified as originating in Arizona [could not] constitutionally justify the requirement that the company build and operate an unneeded $200,000 packing plant in the [s]tate.”
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.