Cragin v. Powell’s Empirical Analysis
128 U.S. 691 · 1888
Citation profile
59 federal appellate · 21 district · 213 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 367 later decisions (30 by the Supreme Court) — most recently January 2024 · most notably Arizona v. California (1983), Knight v. United Land Ass'n (1891)
59 federal appellate · 21 district · 213 state decisions — followed in 30 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 · United States v. San Jacinto Tin Co. · Steel v. St Louis Smelting Refining · Thomas Ellicott v. William Pearl
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 367 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“"* * * when lands are granted according to an official plat of the survey of such lands, the plat itself, with all its notes, lines, descriptions, and land-marks, becomes as much a part of the grant or deed by which they are conveyed, and controls, so far as limits are concerned, as if such descriptive features were written out upon the face of the deed or the grant itself."”
8 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[T]he power to make and correct surveys of the public lands belongs to the political department of the government, and 'the reason of this rule,"' say the court, quoting . . . Haydel v. Dufresne, 17 How. 23 [30 (1854)], "is that great confusion and litigation would ensue if the judicial tribunals, state and federal, were permitted to interfere and overthrow the public surveys on no other ground than an opinion that they could have the work in the field better done and divisions more equitably made that the department of public lands could do."”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““It is conceded that this power of supervision and correction by the commissioner of the general land-office is subject to necessary and decided limitations. Nor is it denied that when the land department has once made and approved a governmental survey of public lands, (the plats, maps, field-notes and certificates all having been filed in 'the proper office,) and has sold or disposed of such lands, the courts have power to protect the private rights of a party who has pur- • chased in good faith from the government against the interferences or appropriations of corrective resurveys made by that department subsequently to such disposition or sale. But there is nothing in the circumstances of this ease which brings it within any such •limitations.””
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.