Robertson v. Gerdan’s Empirical Analysis
132 U.S. 454 · 1889
Citation profile
1 federal appellate ·
How this case has been cited
Cited by 24 later decisions (5 by the Supreme Court) — most recently August 1978
1 federal appellate ·
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.
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 24 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“* * * That the articles were in themselves musical instruments, cannot be gravely contended. They were ivory pieces for the keys of pianos or organs. As imported, they were simply pieces of ivory, which had undergone a process of manufacture; were of a shape and size to be used for certain octaves of pianos and organs; and were sold to piano makers and key-board makers. Those persons scraped the lower surface of the ivory, to make it adhere to a piece of wood to which it was afterwards glued. In the shape in which the articles were imported, they were clearly manufactures of ivory.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“* * * so, in the Revised Statutes of 1874, and as enacted in 1883, while there is no specific duty on parts of musical instruments, as such parts, “catgut strings or gut-cord, for musical instruments”, are made free of duty, leaving other parts of musical instruments to be dutiable under other provisions than that applicable to “musical instruments of all kinds.””
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“If Congress had intended, in either enactment of the Revised Statutes, to impose the same duty on parts of musical instruments which it imposed on musical instruments, it would have been easy to impose that duty on “musical instruments of all kinds, and parts of the same.””
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.