Jefferson Branch Bank v. Skelly’s Empirical Analysis
66 U.S. 436 · 1861
Citation profile
17 federal appellate · 5 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 146 later decisions (42 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2016 · most notably Home Building & Loan Ass'n v. Blaisdell (1934), United States v. Winstar Corp. (1996)
17 federal appellate · 5 district · 16 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Dodge v. Woolsey · New Jersey v. Wilson · The Piqua Branch of the State Bank of Ohio v. Jacob Knoop Treasurer of Miami County · Samuel Gordon v. The Appeal Tax Court James Cheston
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 146 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We answer to this, as this court has repeatedly said, whenever an occasion has been presented for its expression, that its rule of interpretation has invariably been that the constructions given by the courts of the states to state legislation and to state Constitutions have been conclusive upon this court, with a single exception, and that is when it has been called upon to interpret the contracts of states, ‘though they have been made in the forms of law,’ or by the instrumentality of a state’s authorized functionaries, in conformity with state legislation. It has never been denied, nor is it now, that the Supreme Court of the United States has an appellate power to revise the judgment of the Supreme Court of a state, whenever such a court shall adjudge that not to be a contract which has been alleged, in the forms of legal proceedings, by a litigant, to be one, within the meaning of that clause of. the Constitution of the United States which inhibits the states'from passing any law impairing the obligations of contracts. Of what use would the appellate power be to the litigant who feels himself aggrieved by some particular state legislation, if this court could not decide, independently of all adjudication by the Supreme Court of a state, whether or not the phraseology of the instrument in controversy was expressive of a contract and within the protection of the Constitution of the United States; and that its obligation should be enforced, notwithstanding a contrary concl”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“expressed in terms too plain to be mistaken.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“[T]he vital importance of a State’s right to tax was considered, and the relinquishment of it by a State has never been presumed. That language of the court has always been cautious, and affirmative of the right of the State to impose taxes, unless it has relinquished by unmistakable words, clearly indicating the intention of the State to do so. This court has always said and acted upon it: We will not say that a State may not relinquish its right to tax in particular cases, or that a consideration sufficiently valuable to induce a partial increase of it may not exist, but as the whole community is interested in preserving it undiminished, it has a right to insist that its abandonment ought not to be presumed in a case in which the deliberate purpose of a State to abandon it does not appear.”
2 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.