John Sinnot Samuel Wolf and James Sands v. Gorham Davenport’s Empirical Analysis
63 U.S. 227 · 1859
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 10 district · 64 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 194 later decisions (45 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2000 · most notably Hines v. Davidowitz (1941), Joseph Lochner v. People of the State of New York (1905)
2 federal appellate · 10 district · 64 state decisions — followed in 28 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 Brown v. Maryland · Thames Bank v. Lovell · People v. Brooks
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 194 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We agree that, in the application of this principle of supremacy of an act of Congress in a case where the state law is but the exercise of a reserved power, the repugnance or conflict should be direct and positive, so that the two acts could not be reconciled or consistently stand together. When, therefore, an act of the Legislature of a state prescribes a regulation of the subject repugnant to and inconsistent with the regulation of Congress, the state law must give way; and this without regard to the source of power whence the state Legislature derived its enactment.””
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““These are the guards and restraints, and the only guards and restraints, which Congress has seen fit to annex to the privileges of ships and vessels engaged in the coasting trade, and upon a compliance with which, as we have seen, as full and complete authority is conferred by the license to carry on the trade as Congress is capable of conferring.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“In every such case, the act of Congress or treaty is supreme; and the law of the State, though enacted in the exercise of powers not controverted, must yield to it.”
1 later decision 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.