Botiller v. Dominguez’s Empirical Analysis
130 U.S. 238 · 1889
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 26 district · 34 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 151 later decisions (26 by the Supreme Court) — most recently October 2024 · most notably Reid v. Covert (1957), In re Neagle (1890)
36 federal appellate · 26 district · 34 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.
Relationships
Relies on Fletcher v. Peck · Edye v. Robertson · Whitney v. Robertson · The United States v. Don Fernando De La Maza Arredondo · Newhall v. Sanger
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 151 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“. „ , “* * * But we are quite satisfied that upon principle, as we have attempted to show, there can be no doubt of the proposition, that no title to land in California, dependent upon Spanish or Mexican grants can be of any validity which has not been submitted to and confirmed by the board provided for that purpose in the act of 1851; or, if rej'ected by that board, confirmed by the District or Supreme Court of the United States.””
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““The fifteenth section declares that the final decrees rendered in such cases, or any patent issued under the act, ‘shall be conclusive between the United States and the said claimants only’; that is to say, it shall he conclusive on the United States and on the claimants, but it shall not conclude the rights of anybody else, if in a position to contest the action of the board. * * * When this was done, the aim of the statute was attained. The order of the commissioners or the decree of the court established as between the United States and the private citizen the validity or the invalidity of such claims, and enabled the government of the United States, out of all its vast domain, to say ‘this is my property,’ and also enabled the claimant under the Mexican government who had a just claim, whether legal or equitable, to say “this is mine.’ This was the purpose of the statute; and it was equally important to the object which the United States had in the passage of it, that claims under perfect grants from the Mexican government should be established as that imperfect claims should be established or rejected. * * * We are unable to see any injustice, any want of constitutional power, or any violation of the treaty, in the means by which the United States undertook to separate the lands in which it held the proprietary interest from those which belonged, either equitably or by strict legal title, to private persons.””
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“The superior force which is attached ... to a perfect grant from the Mexican government had its just influence in the board of commissioners, or in the courts to which their decisions could be carried by appeal. If the title was perfect, it would there be decided by a court of competent jurisdiction, holding that the claim thus presented was valid; if it was not, then it was the right and the duty of that court to determine whether it was such a claim as the United States was bound to respect, even though it was not perfect as to all the forms and proceedings under which it was derived .”
1 later decision 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.