Platt v. Union Pacific Railroad’s Empirical Analysis
99 U.S. 48 · 1878
Citation profile
97 federal appellate · 24 district · 31 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 295 later decisions (20 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2017 · most notably Bailey v. United States (1995), Northern Securities Company v. United States (1904)
97 federal appellate · 24 district · 31 state decisions — followed in 17 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 The United States v. Jonah Crosby · Shepley v. Cowan · The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantationss v. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts · United States v. Union Pacific Railroad
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 295 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Congress is not to be presumed to hare used words for no purpose. * " * But tbe admitted rules of'statutory construction declare that a Legislature is presumed to have used no superfluous words. Courts are to accord a meaning, if possible, to every word in a statute.””
6 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““There is always a tendency to construe statutes in the light in which they appear when the construction is given. * * * But, in endeavoring to ascertain what the Congress of 1862 intended, we must, so far as possible, place ourselves in the light that Congress enjoyed, look at things as they appeared to it, and discover its purpose in the language used in connection with the attending circumstances.”-”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Congress is not to be presumed to have used words for no purpose”
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.