Thornley v. United States’s Empirical Analysis
113 U.S. 310 · 1885
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 10 district · 10 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 58 later decisions (9 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 2022 · most notably Johnson v. Southern Pacific Co. (1904), Hamilton v. Rathbone (1899)
11 federal appellate · 10 district · 10 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 United States v. Tyler · Benton v. . Wickwire · Portage County Mutual Insurance v. Stukey · Farrel Foundry v. Dart
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 58 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““We are not called on to explain why Congress should apply one rule to the officers of the army and another to the officers of the navy. It is sufficient to say that it has clearly done so. If the law is unequal and unjust, the remedy is with Congress, and not with the courts.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“[w]here the meaning of a statute is plain, it is the duty of the courts to enforce it according to its obvious terms.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“In such a case there is no necessity for construction.”
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.