Blake v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
103 U.S. 227 · 1880
Citation profile
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 17 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 92 later decisions (36 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2006 · most notably Myers v. United States (1926), Taylor v. Beckham (1900)
5 federal appellate · 4 district · 17 state decisions — followed in 10 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 Mimmack v. United States
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 92 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“Our conclusion is that there was no purpose, by the fifth section of the act of July 13, 1866, to withdraw from the President the power, with the advice and consent of the Senate, to supersede an officer in the military or naval service by the appointment of some one in his place. If the power of the President and Senate, in this regard, could be constitutionally subjected to restrictions by statute, (as to which we express no opinion,) it is sufficient for the present case to say that Congress did not intend by that section to impose them. It is, in substance and effect, nothing more than a declaration that the power theretofore exercised by the President, without the concurrence of the Senate, of summarily dismissing or discharging officers of the Army or Navy, whenever in his judgment the interest of the service required it to be done, shall not exist, or be exercised, in time of peace, except in pursuance of the sentence of a court martial, or in commutation thereof. There was, as we think, no intention to deny or restrict the power of the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to displace them by the appointment of others in their places.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“Art. 118. Officers, Separation from. Service. — No officer .shall be discharged or dismissed from the service, except by order of the President or by sentence of a general court-martial;' and in time of peace no officer shall be dismissed except in pursuance of the sentence of a general court-martial or in mitigation thereof; but the President may at any time drop from the rolls of the Army any officer who has been absent from duty three months without leave or who has been absent in confinement in a prison or penitentiary for three months after final conviction by a court of competent jurisdiction:.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“that whereas, under the act of July 17, 1862, as well as before its passage, the President alone was authorized to dismiss an army or naval officer from the service' for any cause which, in his judgment, either rendered such officer unsuitable for, or whose dismissal would promote, the public service, he alone shall not, thereafter, in time of peace, exercise such power of dismissal, except in pursuance o'f a court martial sentence to that'effect or in commutation thereof.”
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.