Railroad Company v. Rock’s Empirical Analysis
71 U.S. 177 · 1866
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 5 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 66 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 1937 · most notably Whitney v. People of State of California (1927), McPherson v. Blacker (1892)
1 federal appellate · 5 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.
Relationships
Relies on Rutherford v. Geddes · Stokes v. County of Scott · Rock v. Wallace
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 66 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It must be the constitution or some law of the state which impairs the obligation of the contract, or whieh is otherwise in conflict with the constitution of the United States; and the decision of the state court must sustain tlie law or constitution of the state in the matter in which the conflict is supposed to exist, or the case for this court does not arise.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Hanford v. Davies“appear in the pleadings of the suit,-or from the evidence in the course of the trial, in the instructions asked for, or from exceptions taken to the rulings of the court,”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“it must be that such a question was necessarily involved in the decision, and that the State court would not have given % judgment without deciding 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.