Lowe v. Securities & Exchange Commission’s Empirical Analysis
1985
Citation profile
177 federal appellate · 44 district · 26 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 391 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Custis v. United States (1994), Dun & Bradstreet, Inc. v. Greenmoss Builders, Inc. (1985)
177 federal appellate · 44 district · 26 state decisions
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
reviewedSecurities & Exchange Commission v. Wall Street Transcript Corp. (from Second Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 80B · 15 U.S.C. § 80B · 15 U.S.C. § 80B · 15 U.S.C. § 80B · 15 U.S.C. § 80B
Relies on Buckley v. Valeo · Skidmore v. Swift & Co. · Ashwander v. Tennessee Valley Authority · Cantwell v. State of Connecticut · Cannon v. University of Chicago
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 391 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“One who takes the affairs of a client personally in hand and purports to exercise judgment on behalf of the client in the light of the client’s individual needs and circumstances is properly viewed as engaging in the practice of a profession. Just as offer and acceptance are communications incidental to the regulable transaction called a contract, the professional’s speech is incidental to the conduct of the profession.... Where the personal nexus between professional and client does not exist, and a speaker does not purport to be exercising judgment on behalf of any particular individual with whose circumstances he is directly acquainted, government regulation ceases to function as legitimate regulation of professional practice with only incidental impact on speech; it becomes regulation of speaking or publishing as such, subject to the First Amendment’s command that “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.””
19 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“'have a rational connection with the applicant's fitness or capacity to practice' the profession.”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“[F]iduciary, person-to-person relationships”
4 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.