Low v. Austin’s Empirical Analysis
80 U.S. 29 · 1871
Citation profile
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 77 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 136 later decisions (33 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2017 · most notably Payne v. Tennessee (1991), Welch v. Texas Department of Highways & Public Transportation (1987)
9 federal appellate · 2 district · 77 state decisions — followed in 19 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. A case is still cited after being overruled — to note the reversal, distinguish it, or in dissent. 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
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 136 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““It is sufficient for the present to say, generally, that when the importer has so acted upon the thing imported, that it has become incorporated and mixed up with the mass of property in the country, it has, perhaps, lost its distinctive character as an import, and has become subject to the taxing power of the state; but while remaining the property of the importer, in his warehouse, in the original form or package in which it was imported, a tax upon it is too plainly a duty on imports to escape the prohibition in the constitution.” (pp. 441, 442.)”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“(w)hilst retaining their character as imports, a tax upon them, in any shape, is within the constitutional prohibition.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““No state shall, without the consent of the congress, lay any imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws: . . . ””
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.