Wight v. Nicholson’s Empirical Analysis
134 U.S. 136 · 1890
Citation profile
101 federal appellate · 15 district · 83 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 262 later decisions (12 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Fay v. Noia (1963), United States v. Mayer (1914)
101 federal appellate · 15 district · 83 state decisions — followed in 24 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 Cuddy · State v. Clark · Bilansky v. State · Gentry v. Garth
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 262 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Our first impression was that whatever might be the powers of courts in chis regard over their records during the term in which the transactions are supposed to have occurred, the record of which, or failure to make any record of which, is the subject of amendment, yet when it was attempted to do this after the adjournment, and at a subsequent term of the court, the powers of the court in making such changes in the records of the proceedings were limited to those in which there remained written memoranda of some kind in the case and among the files of the court by which the record could be amended if erroneous, or the proper entry could be supplied if one had been omitted; and especially that in criminal procedure this power to make such entries at the subsequent term of the court of what had transpired at the former term as would establish the authority of the court to pass a sentence of fine or imprisonment either did not exist at all, or, if it did, was limited to cases in which some written evidence of what was done remained in the papers connected with the case. We are satisfied, however, upon an examination of the authorities, that this restriction upon the power of the court does not exist.””
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““But when the facts stand undisputed, and the objection is based upon the technical point alone that the term has passed at which the record was made up, it would be doing violence to the spirit which pervades the administration of justice in the present age, to sustain it. ’ ’”
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.