MCI Telecommunications Corp. v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co.’s Empirical Analysis
1994
Citation profile
395 federal appellate · 116 district · 62 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 983 later decisions (45 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2026 · most notably Christensen v. Harris County (2000), Food & Drug Administration v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. (2000)
395 federal appellate · 116 district · 62 state decisions — followed in 16 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
reviewedthe decision below (from District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals)
Relationships
Applies 15 U.S.C. § 13 (§ 2 of the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914) · 47 U.S.C. § 151 · 47 U.S.C. § 152 · 47 U.S.C. § 201 · 47 U.S.C. § 202 · 47 U.S.C. § 203 · 47 U.S.C. § 204 · 47 U.S.C. § 208
Relies on Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. · M'Culloch v. State of Maryland · Perrin v. United States · United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co. · Texas Pacific Railway Company v. Abilene Cotton Oil Company
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 983 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“an agency's interpretation of a statute is not entitled to deference when it goes beyond the meaning that the statute can bear.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the essential characteristic of a rate-regulated industry,”
13 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[A] statute's 'general declaration of policy' does not protect agency action that is otherwise inconsistent with the congressional delegation of authority for '[a]gencies are ... "bound, not only by the ultimate purposes Congress has selected, but by the means it has deemed appropriate, and prescribed, for the pursuit of those purposes.”
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.