Wills v. Russell’s Empirical Analysis
100 U.S. 621 · 1879
Citation profile
47 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 87 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2002 · most notably Powers v. United States (1912), Rodella v. United States (1960)
47 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 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 The Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad Company v. James Stimpson · Houghton v. Jones
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 87 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The established rule of practice in the federal courts and in most other jurisdictions in this country is that a party has no right to cross-examine a witness, without leave of the court, as to any facts or circumstances not connected with matters stated in his direct examination, subject to two necessary exceptions: He may ask questions to show bias or prejudice in the witness or to lay the foundation to admit evidence of prior contradictory statements. Subject to those exceptions, the general rule is that, if the party wishes to examine the witness as to other matters, he must, in general, do so by making him his own witness, and calling him as such in the subsequent progress of the case.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Cases not infrequently arise where the convenience of the witness or of the court or the party producing the witness will be promoted by a relaxation of the rule, to enable the witness to be discharged from further attendance; and, if the court in such a case should refuse to enforce the rule, it clearly would not be a ground of error, unless it appear that it worked serious injury to the opposite party.””
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.