United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co.’s Empirical Analysis
125 U.S. 273 · 1888
Citation profile
166 federal appellate · 61 district · 52 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 529 later decisions (97 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2017 · most notably Williams v. State of North Carolina (1945), Schneiderman v. United States (1943)
166 federal appellate · 61 district · 52 state decisions — followed in 19 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 United States v. Throckmorton · Moore v. Robbins · Maxwell Land-Grant Case · Hughes 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 529 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“if it is apparent that the suit is brought for the benefit of some third party, and that the United States has no pecuniary interest in the remedy sought, and is under no obligation to the party who will be benefited . . . ; in short, if there does not appear any obligation on the part of the United States to the public, or to any individual, or any interest of its own, it can no more sustain such an action than any private person could under similar circumstance.”
14 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““If the United States in any particular case has a just cause for calling upon the judiciary of the country, in any of its courts, for relief by setting aside or annulling any of its contracts, its obligations, or its most solemn instruments, the question of the appeal to' the judicial tribunals of the country must primarily be decided by the Attorney General of the United States. That such power should exist somewhere, and that the United States should not be more helpless in relieving itself from frauds, impostures, and deceptions than the private individual, is hardly open to argument. The Constitution itself declares that' the judicial power shall extend to all cases to which the United States shall be a party, and that this means mainly where it is a party ifiainfiff is a necessary result of the well-established proposition that it cannot be sued in auy court without its consent. There must, then, be an officer or officers of the government to determine when the United. States shall sue, to decide for what it shall sue, and to be responsible that such suits shall be brought in appropriate cases. The attorneys of the United States in every judicial district are officers of this character, and they are by statute under the immediate supervision and control of the Attorney General. How, then, can it be argued that, if the United States has been deceived, entrapped, or defrauded into the making under the forms of law of an instrument which injuriously affects its rights of p”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““ * * * we cannot believe that where a case exists in which this [cancellation of patent] ought to be done it is not within the authority of that officer to cause such action to be instituted and prosecuted.””
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.