Doolan v. Carr’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

61 federal appellate · 17 district · 61 state decisions

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 251 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “[E]ven a patent from the government of the United States, issued with all the forms of law, may be shown to be void by extrinsic evidence if it be such evidence as by its nature is capable of showing a want of authority for its issue.”

   7 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Morris v. United States · Lakin v. Dolly

2. ““Those Mexican claims were often described, or attempted to be described, by specific boundaries. They were often claims for a definite quantity of land within much larger outboundaries, and they were frequently described by the name of a place or rancho. To the extent of the claim when the grant was for land with specific boundaries, or known by a particular name, and to the extent of the quantity claimed within outboundaries containing a greater area, they are excluded from the grant to the- railroad company. Indeed, this exclusion did not depend upon the validity of the claim asserted, or its final establishment, but upon the fact that there existed a claim of a right under a grant -by the Mexican government, which was yet undetermined, and to which, therefore, the phrase ‘public lands’ could not attach, and which the .statute did not include, although it might be found within the limits prescribed on each side of the road when located.””

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. United States v. Southern Pacific Railroad · Southern Pac. R. v. Brown

3. ““The opinion, however, examined somewhat at large the grounds on which it should be held that Mexican grants (whether valid or invalid), while under judicial consideration, should be treated as reserved lands. The principal reason was that they were not ‘public lands,’ in the sense of congressional legislation; those terms being habitually used to describe such lands as are subject to sale or other disposal under general laws. The Pacific Railroad acts of 1862 and 1864 only granted, in aid of the railroads to be constructed under them, ‘every alternate section of public land * * * not sold, reserved, or otherwise disposed of by the United States, and to which a pre-emption or homestead claim may not have attached at the time the line of said road is definitely fixed.’ The lands comprised in a Mexican grant, it was held, must be regarded, not as ‘public lands,’ but as ‘reserved lands,’ because, by the treaty with Mexico, all private property was to be respected. And when the act of March 3, 1851, created a board of commissioners to examine all claims to Mexican grants, the thirteenth section declared ‘that all lands the claims to which have been finally rejected by the commissioners in the manner herein provided, or which shall be finally decided to be invalid by the district or supreme court, and all lands the claims to which shall not have been presented to the commissioners within two years after the date of this act, shall be deemed, held, and considered as part of the pub”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Apis v. United States