United States v. McBratney’s Empirical Analysis
104 U.S. 621 · 1881
Citation profile
101 federal appellate · 26 district · 128 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 342 later decisions (44 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 2024 · most notably United States v. Wheeler (1978), Utah Power Light Company v. United States No 202 United States (1917)
101 federal appellate · 26 district · 128 state decisions — followed in 20 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 Kansas Indians · Bates v. Clark · Cherokee Tobacco · Coleman v. Tennessee
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 342 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ * * * the general laws of the United States as to the punishment of offenses committed in any place within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States * * * shall extend to the Indian country.””
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The State of Colorado, by its admission into the Union by Congress, upon an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, without any such exception as has been made in the Treaty with the Ute Indians and in the Act establishing a territorial government, has acquired criminal jurisdiction over its own citizens and other white persons throughout the whole of the territory within its limits, including the Ute Reservation, and that reservation is no longer within the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. The courts of the United States have, therefore, no jurisdiction to punish crimes within that reservation, unless so far as may be necessary to carry out such provisions of the Treaty with the Ute Indians as remain in force. But that Treaty contains no stipulation for the punishment of offenses committed by white men against white men. It follows that the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Colorado has no jurisdiction of this indictment * * *”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““■But the act of Congress of March 3, 1875, c. 139, for the admission of Colorado into the Union, authorized the inhabitants of the territory to form for themselves out of said territory a state government, with the name of the ‘State of Colorado/ which state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union upon an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatsoever; and the act •contains no exception of the Utes Reservation, or of jurisdiction over it. 18 Stat. pt. 3, p. 474. The provision of section 1 of the subsequent act of June 26, 1876, c. 147 ( 19 Stat. 61 ). that upon the'admission of the state of Colorado into the Union, the laws of the United States, not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the state as elsewhere within the United States, does not create any such exception. Such a provision has a less extensive effect within the limits of one of the states of the Union than in one of the territories of which the United States have sole and exclusive jurisdiction.””
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.