United States v. Denver R G Ry Co’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

35 federal appellate · 23 district · 41 state decisions

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 146 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “It is undoubtedly, as urged by the plaintiffs in error, the well-settled rule of this court that public grants are construed strictly against the grantees, but they are not to be so construed as to defeat the intent of the legislature, or to withhold what is given either expressly or by necessary or fair implication. . . . 27 ". . . When an act, operating as a general law, and manifesting clearly the intention of Congress to secure public advantages, or to subserve the public interests and welfare by means of benefits more or less valuable, offers to individuals or to corporations as an inducement to undertake and accomplish great and expensive enterprises or works of a quasi public character in or through an immense and undeveloped public domain, such legislation stands upon a somewhat different footing from merely a private grant, and should receive at the hands of the court a more liberal construction in favor of the purposes for which it was enacted.”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States · 386 F. Supp. 2d 999 - Home on the Range v. AT & T Corp.

2. “are not to be so construed as to defeat the intent of the legislature,”

   2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. Leo Sheep Co. v. United States · Watt v. Western Nuclear, Inc.

3. “presents the question as to where, or at what place, and for %vhat purposes, the railway company may rightfully use timber or other material taken from the public lands adjacent to the line of its road.... The license to take timber is not, by the language of the act, limited to what is necessary for the construction of such portion of the road as is adjacent to the place from which the timber is taken, but extends to the construction of the entire “railroad.” The right is given to use the material “necessary for the construction of said railroad.” This language treats the railroad as an entirety, in the construction of which it was the purpose of congress to aid by conferring upon any railway company entitled to the benefits of the act the right to take timber necessary for such construction from the public lands adjacent to the line of the road.... As to the purposes for which the material may be used, it must be borne in mind that the benefits intended to be conferred by the act are not confined or limited to the roadbed or roadway, as the foundation upon which the superstructure is to rest, but are extended to the “railroad” as a completed or perfected structure. In addition to the right of way and the right to take timber for the purposes of this completed or entire structure called the “railroad,” there is granted by the act “also ground adjacent to such right of way for station buildings, depots, machine shops, side tracks, turnouts, and water tanks.... ” By this provi”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. 386 F. Supp. 2d 999 - Home on the Range v. AT & T Corp.