Coolidge v. Payson’s Empirical Analysis
15 U.S. 66 · 1817
Citation profile
11 federal appellate · 28 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 60 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently December 1940 · most notably Swift v. Tyson (1842), Townsley v. Sumrall (1829)
11 federal appellate · 28 state decisions — followed in 12 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.
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 60 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““ That a letter written within a reasonable time before or after the date of a bill of exchange, describing it in terms not to be mistaken, and promising to accept it, is, if shown to the person who afterwards takes the bill on the credit of the letter, a virtual acceptance binding the person who makes the promise.” Coolidge v. Payson, 2 Wheat. 66 .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority““A letter written within a reasonable time before or after the date of a bill of exchange, describing it in terms not to be mistaken, and promising to accept it, is, if shown to the person who afterwards takes the bill on the credit of the letter, a virtual acceptance binding the person who makes the promise.””
1 later decision 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.