Callan v. Wilson’s Empirical Analysis
127 U.S. 540 · 1888
Citation profile
180 federal appellate · 55 district · 252 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 726 later decisions (103 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2025 · most notably Fay v. Noia (1963), Duncan v. State of Louisiana (1968)
180 federal appellate · 55 district · 252 state decisions — followed in 34 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 Reynolds v. States · Wilson · Mackin v. United States · Webster v. Reid
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 726 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[t]hat in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a ... trial, by an impartial jury....”
22 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““Except in that class or grade of offenses called ‘petty offenses,’ which, according to the common law, may be proceeded against summarily in any tribunal legally constituted for that purpose, the guaranty of an impartial jury to the accused in a criminal prosecution, conducted either in the name or by or under the authority of the United States, secures to him the right to enjoy that mode of trial from the first moment, and in whatever court, he is put on trial for the offense charged. In such cases, a judgment of conviction, not based upon a verdict of guilty by a jury, is void.” (Emphasis supplied.)”
9 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““. . . conceding that there is a class of petty or minor offences, not usually embraced in public criminal statutes, and not of the class or grade triable at common law by a jury ... we are of opinion that the offence with which the appellant is charged does not belong to that class. A conspiracy such as is charged against him and his codefendants is by no means a petty or trivial offence. ‘The general rule of the common law,’ the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts said in Commonwealth v. Hunt, 4 Met. 111 , 121, ‘is, that it is a criminal and indictable offence, for two or more to confederate and combine together, by concerted means to do that which is unlawful or criminal . . . ’ ” Id. at 555, 8 S.Ct. at 1306 . (Emphasis added.)”
5 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.