Samuel Thurlow v. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s Empirical Analysis
46 U.S. 504 · 1847
Citation profile
35 federal appellate · 32 district · 159 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 456 later decisions (103 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2019 · most notably Craig v. Boren (1976), Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992)
35 federal appellate · 32 district · 159 state decisions — followed in 40 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 M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Brown v. Maryland
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 456 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““And if any state deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits injurious to its citizens, and calculated to produce idleness, vice, or debauchery, I see nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent it from regulating and restraining the traffic, or from prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks proper. Of the wisdom of this policy, it is not my province or my purpose to speak. Upon that subject, each state must decide for itself.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But what are the police powers of a State ? They are nothing more or less than the powers of government inherent in every sovereignty to the extent of its dominions. And whether a State passes a quarantine law, or a law to punish offences, or to establish courts of justice, or requiring certain instruments to be recorded, or to regulate commerce within its own. limits, in every case it exercises the same power; that .is to say, the power of sovereignty, the power to govern men and things within the limits of its dominion. It is by virtue of this power that it legislates; and its authority to make regulations of commerce is as absolute as its power to pass health laws, except in so far as it has been restricted by the constitution of the United States.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Leisy v. Hardin · Lottery Case
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.