Harrison v. PPG Industries, Inc.’s Empirical Analysis
1980
Citation profile
352 federal appellate · 70 district · 42 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 863 later decisions (71 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Connecticut National Bank v. Germain (1992), Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Enrico St Cyr (2001)
352 federal appellate · 70 district · 42 state decisions — followed in 14 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
reviewedPPG Industries, Inc. v. Harrison (from Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 28 U.S.C. § 1331 · 42 U.S.C. § 7410 · 42 U.S.C. § 7411 · 42 U.S.C. § 7412 · 42 U.S.C. § 7413 · 42 U.S.C. § 7419 · 42 U.S.C. § 7420 · 42 U.S.C. § 7521
Relies on Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner · Yakus v. United States · United States v. Powell · Gooch v. United States
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 863 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[I]t would be a strange canon of statutory construction that would require Congress to state in committee reports or elsewhere in its deliberations that which is obvious on the face of a statute. In ascertaining the meaning of a statute, a court cannot, in the manner of Sherlock Holmes, pursue the theory of the dog that did not bark.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In a case where the construction of legislative language such as this makes so sweeping and so relatively unorthodox a change as that made here, I think judges as well as detectives may take into consideration the fact that a watchdog did not bark in the night”
10 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the dissent“any other final action of the Administrator”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.