St. Louis v. Ferry Co.’s Empirical Analysis
78 U.S. 423 · 1870
Citation profile
20 federal appellate · 12 district · 56 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 176 later decisions (43 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 2016 · most notably Pullman's Palace-Car Co v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1891), Japan Line, Ltd. v. County of Los Angeles (1979)
20 federal appellate · 12 district · 56 state decisions — followed in 23 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.
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 176 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"Where there is jurisdiction neither as to person nor prop; erty, the imposition of a tax would be ultra vires and void. If the legislature of a State should enact that the citizens or property of another State or country should be taxed in. the same manner as the persons and property within its own limits and subject to its authority, or in any manner whatsoever, such a law would - be as much a nullity as if in conflict with the most explicit constitutional inhibition. Jurisdic-. tion is as necessary to valid legislative as to valid judicial action.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It has been said that the power of taxation for the purposes of the commonwealth is a part of all governmental sovereignty and is inseparable from it. It is for the legislature to decide what persons and property shall be reached by the exercise of this function and in what proportions and by what processes and in-strumentalities taxes shall be assessed and collected. The authority extends over all persons and property within the sphere of its territorial jurisdiction. When called into activity there can be no limit to the degree of its exercise except what is found in the wisdom of the lawmaking power and the operation of those conservative principles which lie at the foundation of all free government.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““In the jurisprudence of the United States a corporation is regarded as in effect a citizen of the state which created it'. It has no faculty to emigrate. It can exercise its franchise extraterritorially only so far as may be permitted by the policy or comity of other sovereignties.””
2 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.