Henderson v. Mayor of the City of New York Commissioners of Immigration v. North German Lloyd’s Empirical Analysis
92 U.S. 259 · 1876
Citation profile
40 federal appellate · 38 district · 80 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 452 later decisions (91 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2024 · most notably Hines v. Davidowitz (1941), Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)
40 federal appellate · 38 district · 80 state decisions — followed in 29 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 · Aaron Cooley v. The Board of Wardens of the Port of Philadelphia to the Use of the Society for the Relief of Distressed Pilots Their Widows and Children Same · Samuel Thurlow v. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts · Gilman v. Philadelphia
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 452 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“A regulation which imposes onerous, perhaps impossible, conditions on those engaged in active commerce with foreign nations, must of necessity be national in its character. It is more than this; for it may properly be called international. It belongs to that class of laws which concern the exterior relation of this whole nation with other nations and governments.”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is clear, from the nature of our complex form of government, that whenever the statute of a state invades the domain of legislation which belongs exclusively to the congress of the United States, it is void, no matter under what class of powers it may fall, or how closely allied to powers conceded to belong to the states.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. In re Barber · In re Rebman“can scarcely conceive a system for regulating commerce between nations which shall exclude all laws concerning navigation, which shall be silent on the admission of the vessels of one nation into the ports of another;”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Lottery Case · Edye v. Robertson
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.