Ayers v. Watson’s Empirical Analysis
132 U.S. 394 · 1889
Citation profile
20 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 46 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 1972 · most notably Mattox v. United States (1895), United States v. Lipscomb (1970)
20 federal appellate · 4 district · 16 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 Ayers v. Watson · The Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company v. Sebre Howard · Morton v. Folger
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 46 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““The circumstances under which the former statements of a witness in regard to the subject-matter of his testimony when examined in the principal case can be introduced to contradict or impeach his testimony, are well settled, and are the same whether his testimony in the principal case is given orally in court before the jury, or is taken by deposition afterwards read to them. In all such cases, even. where the matter occurs on the spur of the moment in a trial before a jury, and where the objectionable testimony may then come for the first time to the knowledge of the opposite party,' it is the rule that, before those former declarations can be used to impeach or contradict the witness, his attention must be called to what may be brought forward for that purpose, and this must be done with great particularity as to time and place and circumstances, so that he can deny it, or make any .explanation intending to reconcile what he formerly said with what he is now testifying. While the courts have been somewhat liberal in giving the opposing party an opportunity to present to the witness the matter in which they propose to contradict him, even going so far as to permit him to be recalled and cross-examined on that subject after he has left the stand, it is believed that in no case has any court deliberately held that after the witness’s testimony has been taken, committed to writing, and used in the court, and by his death he is placed beyond the reach of any power of explanati”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
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.