Wolverton v. Nichols’s Empirical Analysis
119 U.S. 485 · 1886
Citation profile
1 federal appellate · 10 district · 15 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 38 later decisions (4 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 1920 · most notably Cole v. Ralph (1920), Upton v. Santa Rita Mining Co. (1907)
1 federal appellate · 10 district · 15 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.
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 38 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The proceedings in this case commenced by the assertion of the defendants’ claim to have a patent issue to them for the land in controversy. The next step was the filing of an adverse claim by the plaintiffs in the land office; and the present suit is but a continuation of those proceedings, prescribed by the laws of the United States, to have a determination of the question as to which of the contesting parties is entitled to the patent. The act of Congress requires that the certified copy of the judgment of the court shall be filed in the land office, and shall be there conclusive. And we must keep this main purpose of the action in view in any decision made with regard to the rights of the parties.’’ ,”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.